Which countries were liberated by the Red Army. The Red Army is the only army that was able to defeat the Wehrmacht in World War II. Beginning of the Civil War

Military operations in 1944

Offensive operations of the Red Army

At the beginning of 1944, the strategic initiative was in the hands of the anti-Hitler coalition. The Red Army gained experience in offensive operations. This meant inflicting decisive blows on the enemy and liberating the territory of the USSR from the invaders. During 10 winter and spring offensive operations, the Red Army completely lifted the 900-day blockade of Leningrad, surrounded and captured the Korsun-Shevchenkovsky enemy groups, liberated the Crimea and most of Ukraine. Army Group South was defeated. During the summer campaign, an operation (“Bagration”) was carried out to liberate Belarus. On the eve of the operation, on June 20, Belarusian partisans paralyzed the railway communication behind enemy lines. It was possible to misinform the enemy about the upcoming course of the operation. Soviet troops for the first time secured air supremacy. Soviet troops broke through the enemy defenses, liberated Vitebsk, Mogilev, and then Minsk. By mid-July, battles broke out for Vilnius, and the liberation of the Baltic states began. As a result of the offensives of the Karelian and Baltic fronts, the Nazis suffered a crushing defeat in the Baltic. Army Group Center was defeated. By the end of 1944, almost the entire territory of the USSR (within the borders of June 22, 1941) was liberated from the invaders, more than 2.6 million enemy soldiers and officers, a significant amount of its military equipment, were destroyed. Under the blows of the Red Army, the fascist bloc disintegrated. Finland left the war. In Romania, the Antonescu regime was overthrown and the new government declared war on Germany.

The liberation of the territory of the USSR, the transfer of hostilities to Eastern Europe

In the autumn of 1944, the invaders were expelled from the territory of the USSR. The liberation of the countries of Europe - Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia - from the Nazis began. The Soviet government officially declared that the entry of the Red Army into the territory of other countries was caused by the need to completely defeat the armed forces of Germany and was not intended to change the political system of these states or violate their territorial integrity. Together with the Soviet troops, the Czechoslovak Corps, the Bulgarian Army, the People's Liberation Army of Yugoslavia, the First and Second Armies of the Polish Army, several Romanian units and formations took part in the liberation of their countries. (The imposition of the Soviet model of socialism on the countries of Eastern Europe began no earlier than 1948-1949, already in the conditions of the Cold War.) The largest transactions in Europe were: the Vistula-Oder, East Prussian, Belgrade, Iasi-Kishinev. The contribution of the Red Army to the liberation of the Eastern European countries can hardly be overestimated. More than 3.5 million Soviet soldiers died in battles on Polish soil alone. The Red Army played a significant role in saving the museum city of Krakow. In order to preserve the monuments of Budapest, the Commander of the First Ukrainian Front, I. S. Konev, decided not to bomb the city. During the autumn offensive of 1944, the Red Army advanced to the Vistula, capturing three bridgeheads on the left bank. In December, there was a lull on the Soviet-German front, and the Soviet command began a regrouping of forces.

Opening a second front in Europe

The dates and place for the opening of the second front were already determined at the Tehran Conference in 1943. The leaders of the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition - Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin - agreed to launch a large-scale landing operation in the north and south of France. It was also decided that at the same time Soviet troops would launch an offensive in Belarus to prevent the transfer of German forces from the Eastern Front to the Western. American General D. Eisenhower became the commander of the combined allied forces. On the territory of England, the allies began to concentrate troops, weapons, military equipment.

The German command expected the invasion, but could not determine the beginning and place of the operation. Therefore, German troops were stretched along the entire coast of France. The Germans also hoped for their defense system - the "Atlantic Wall", stretching from Denmark to Spain. At the beginning of June 1944, Hitler had 59 divisions in France and the Netherlands.

For two months, the Allies carried out diversionary maneuvers, and on June 6, 1944, unexpectedly for the Germans, 3 air divisions landed in Normandy. At the same time, a fleet with Allied troops moved across the English Channel. Operation Overlord has begun. The landing of allied troops in France was the largest landing operation in the history of wars. The operation involved 2.9 million Allied soldiers, who were supported by about 7,000 aircraft and 1,200 warships. The main task was to create a bridgehead on which the main troops could deploy. Such a bridgehead has been created. Soviet troops, according to the agreement, launched Operation Bagration in the Belarusian direction. Thus, the second front was opened. It became one of the most important theaters of World War II and brought it closer to completion.

The successes of the Anglo-American troops in the Pacific and in Europe

In 1944, the Allies stepped up their operations in the Pacific. At the same time, they managed to achieve a huge advantage of their forces and weapons over the Japanese: in terms of total numbers - 1.5 times, in the number of aircraft - 3 times, in the number of ships of different classes - 1.53 times. In early February 1944, the Americans captured the Marshall Islands. The Japanese defenses in the center of the Pacific were broken through. Then the US troops managed to establish control over the Marianas and the Philippines. The main sea communications connecting Japan with the countries of Southeast Asia were cut. Having lost raw materials, Japan began to rapidly lose its military-industrial potential.

In general, events in Europe also developed successfully for the Allies. At the end of July 1944, the general offensive of the Anglo-American troops began in northern France. The Atlantic Wall was broken through in a matter of days. On August 15, the landing of American and French troops began in the south of France (Operation Envil). The Allied offensive was successful. On August 24 they entered Paris, on September 3 - in Brussels. The German command began to withdraw its troops to the "Siegfried Line" - a system of fortifications on the western borders of Germany. Attempts by the Allied troops to overcome it were not immediately successful. In early December 1944, the troops of the Western powers were forced to suspend active operations.

The internal situation and life of the population in the countries that fought

From September 1939, speaking on the radio, President F. D. Roosevelt declared that the United States would remain neutral. But with the expansion of fascist aggression in Europe, the United States increasingly resolutely moved away from neutrality. In May 1940, F. D. Roosevelt set the goal of producing 50,000 aircraft per year, and in June he ordered work to begin on the creation of the atomic bomb. In September, for the first time in the history of the United States, a law on universal conscription in peacetime came into force, the number of conscripts was determined at 900 thousand people a year. The American government provided more and more support for Great Britain, fought.

Roosevelt's policies provoked inflammatory attacks from isolationists. Their governing body was the America First Committee. Isolationists argued that England was on the verge of defeat, so the United States should not think about extensive assistance to her, but only about her own security. The internal political struggle escalated in the summer of 1940 during the regular presidential elections. Roosevelt won this election. For the first time in American history, the same candidate was the third elected president.

On March 11, 1941, Roosevelt signed the Lend-Lease Act (on lending or leasing military property to countries fighting against Nazism). At first, lend-lease assistance was provided only to Great Britain and China, but already on November 30, 1941, the law was extended to the USSR. In total, 42 countries received Lend-Lease assistance. By the end of 1945, the US spending on Lend-Lease amounted to more than 50 billion dollars.

The US government did not introduce universal labor service, but prohibited the transfer of workers from one enterprise to another without the consent of the employer. Duration working week was increased from 40 to 48 hours, but in fact in most military factories it was 60-70 hours. 6 million women came to production, but they received half the salary as men. The strike movement was reduced, as the workers understood the need to mobilize all forces to defeat fascism. Labor conflicts were often resolved through negotiations between trade unions and employers. Mobilization into the army, increased employment contributed to the almost complete disappearance of unemployment in the country. The US has significantly increased its gold resources, which amounted to 3/4 of the world's gold reserves (excluding the USSR).

During the war, there was a consolidation of all the political forces of the country. In November 1944, F. D. Roosevelt was elected president for a fourth term, but on April 12, 1945, he died. H. Truman took over as head of state.

The war put an end to "isolationism" as an influential trend in US foreign policy.

Great Britain

The German offensive in Western Europe, which began in the spring of 1940, meant the complete collapse of the "appeasement" policy. On May 8, 1940, the government of N. Chamberlain was forced to resign. The new coalition government was headed by W. Churchill, a supporter of an uncompromising struggle against Germany. His government carried out a number of emergency measures to transfer the economy to a military footing and strengthen the armed forces, primarily the land army. The formation of civil self-defense units began. Churchill's military policy was based on simple principles: Hitler's Germany is an enemy, an alliance with the United States is needed to defeat it, as well as any other help, even from the Communists.

After the catastrophe of France, the threat of a German invasion hung over Great Britain. On July 16, 1940, Hitler signed the Sea Lion plan, which called for an amphibious landing in England. The battle for England in 1940-1941 became a heroic page in the history of the English people. German planes bombed London and other cities to sow fear among the population and break their will to resist. However, the British did not give up and inflicted serious losses on the enemy. Significant assistance to Great Britain was given by its dominions, especially Canada, which had a great industrial potential. By the end of 1940, the British government had almost completely exhausted its gold reserves and found itself on the brink of a financial crisis. He had to take out a $15 billion loan from the US.

In 1941-1942, the efforts of the British government, with the full support of the people, were aimed at mobilizing forces and means to repulse the enemy. Until 1943, the restructuring of the economy on a war footing was completely completed. Dozens of large aviation, tank, cannon and other military factories were put into operation. By the summer of 1943, 3,500 household goods factories had been transferred to the war industries.

In 1943, the state disposed of 75% of all products produced in England and 90% of the country's financial resources. The government has set a national minimum wage. Social insurance, medical care at enterprises were improved, layoffs of workers were prohibited, etc.

From the second half of 1944, a decline in production began in England. The standard of living of the population has decreased. Increased social tension in society. By the end of the war, England found itself in great financial, economic and political dependence on the United States.

France

The defeat in the war with Germany led the French people to a national catastrophe. The French army and navy were disarmed and demobilized, two-thirds of France, including Paris, occupied by Germany. The southern part of the country (the so-called "free zone") and the colonies were not occupied and were controlled by the government established in the resort town of Vichy, headed by the 84-year-old Marshal Pétain. Formally, his government was considered the government of all of France, but in the occupied zone, the German fascist invaders were actually in charge. They brought the French administration under their control, disbanded all political parties, banned meetings, demonstrations and strikes. Soon roundups began on Jews who were sent to German extermination camps. The invaders supported their power with brutal terror. If during the hostilities in 1939-1940 France lost 115 thousand people killed, then during the years of occupation, when it was officially considered a country that did not take part in hostilities, more than 500 thousand people died. The ultimate goal of the Nazi occupation was the dismemberment and complete enslavement of France. In July-November 1940, the Germans expelled 200 thousand French from Alsace and Lorraine, and then included these areas in Germany.

Pétain abolished the posts of president and prime minister. Elective institutions (from parliament to municipalities) were suppressed. All the fullness of the executive and legislative power was concentrated in the hands of Pétain, who was declared "head of state." The very word "republic" was gradually withdrawn from circulation and replaced by the term "French State". Following the example of the occupiers, the Vichy government persecuted the Jews. In September 1942, the Pétain government, at the request of the occupiers, introduced compulsory labor service in order to supply labor for German industry. All French people between the ages of 19 and 50 could be sent to work in Germany.

On November 11, 1942, after the Allied landings in Africa, Germany and Italy occupied the southern zone of France.

The actions of the invaders and their accomplices aroused indignation among many French. Already in the first months of the occupation, a resistance movement was born in France and abroad. 1940 in London, General Charles de Gaulle (in France he was sentenced to death in absentia for "desertion") creates the organization "France that fights", the motto of which was the words: "Honor and Motherland". De Gaulle is doing a great job of developing the resistance movement. In November 1942, the Communist Party of France, which had great influence in the resistance movement, signed an agreement on joint action with the forces of "France is fighting." In 1943, unified organs of the Resistance arose in France, significantly strengthening its forces. All participants in the anti-fascist struggle recognized the general leadership of the French Committee of the National Liberation (FCNZ), which was headed by Charles de Gaulle.

The opening of the second front caused a patriotic upsurge in the country. A national anti-fascist uprising began, covering 40 of the 90 French departments. 28 departments were liberated exclusively by the Resistance forces without the participation of the Allied forces. On August 18, an uprising began in Paris. In the course of stubborn fighting, by August 24, the main part of the French capital was liberated. In the evening of the same day, the advanced units of General de Gaulle entered Paris. The Parisian armed uprising ended in complete victory. In November - December 1944, the entire French territory was liberated.

The war cut short the peaceful life of the Soviet people. A period of severe trials has begun. On June 22, the mobilization of men aged 23 to 36 was announced. Hundreds of thousands of volunteers besieged the military registration and enlistment offices. This made it possible to double the size of the army and send 291 divisions and 94 brigades to the front by December 1 (over 6 million people). At the same time, it was necessary to rebuild the economy, social and political relations as soon as possible and subordinate them to a single goal - Victory over the enemy. On June 30, 1941, the State Defense Committee (headed by I. Stalin) was created, which exercised full power in the country and led the restructuring of the economy on a war footing. On June 29, the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks formulated the slogan: "Everything for the front, everything for victory." The main directions for restructuring the economy on a war footing were outlined:

Evacuation of industrial enterprises, material assets and people from the frontline areas to the east;

Transfer of factories and factories of the civil sector to the production of military equipment;

Accelerated construction of new industrial facilities in the east of the country.

However, the offensive of the German armies often frustrated evacuation plans, led to a chaotic and disorderly withdrawal of troops and population. failed to complete tasks and railway. Agriculture was in a difficult position. The USSR lost territories, produced 38% of grain and 84% of sugar. In the autumn of 1941, a rationing system was introduced to provide the population with food (covering up to 70 million people). Despite the difficulties, by the end of 1941, the equipment of 2,500 industrial enterprises and more than 10 million people were able to move to the east. In addition, about 2.4 million heads of cattle, 5.1 million sheep and goats, 200 thousand pigs, 800 thousand horses were exported. But the loss of the most important economic regions led to a significant decline in production, a decrease in the supply of the army.

Emergency measures were taken to organize production - from June 26, 1941, compulsory overtime work was introduced for workers and employees, the working day for adults increased to 11 hours, holidays were canceled. In December, all employees of military enterprises were declared mobilized and assigned to work at this enterprise. The main burden of the work fell on the shoulders of women and adolescents. Workers often worked day and night, and rested right in the shops at the machines. The militarization of labor made it possible to stop and gradually increase the growth in the production of weapons and military equipment. In the east of the country and in Siberia, evacuated enterprises were put into operation one after another. For example, the Leningrad plant named after Kirov and the Kharkov plant for the production of diesel engines merged with the Chelyabinsk tractor plant for the production of tanks ("Tankograd"). Similar enterprises were formed in the Volga region and the Gorky region. Many peaceful factories and factories switched to the production of military products.

In the autumn of 1942, armaments were produced more than in pre-war 1941. The USSR was significantly ahead of Germany in the production of military equipment, not only in quantity (2,100 aircraft, 2,000 tanks per month), but also in terms of quality. Since June 1941, serial production of mortar installations of the Katyusha type, a modernized T-34 tank, begins. By 1943 aviation received new Il-10 and Yak-7 aircraft. Methods for automatic welding of armor were developed (E. O. Paton), and automatic machines for the production of cartridges were designed. The rear provided the front with a sufficient amount of weapons, military equipment and equipment, which allowed the Red Army near Stalingrad to launch a counteroffensive and defeat the enemy. By the end of the war, until May 9, 1945, the Soviet Army had 32.5 thousand tanks and self-propelled guns (self-propelled artillery), 47.3 thousand combat aircraft, 321.5 thousand units of guns and mortars, several times higher than the pre-war level.

The war required certain changes in the political system itself. Summary information from party committees and NKVD bodies testified that the patriotism of the broad masses of the people was combined with a growing distrust of leaders and a desire for independent thinking. In the official ideology, national slogans ("Death to the German occupiers!") replace the class ones ("Proletarians of all countries, unite!"). An indulgence was made in relation to the church: a patriarch was elected, a number of churches were opened, and some of the clergy were released. In 1941, about 200,000 people were liberated from the camps and sent to the army, including more than 20,000 pilot commanders, tankers and artillerymen.

At the same time, the totalitarian system made only those concessions that it needed to save itself. After the decisive victories of 1943 in domestic politics political terror again intensified. In the 1940s, terror was directed against individual peoples. In 1941, the Volga Germans became victims of terror, in 1942, the Finns and Finno-Ugric peoples of Leningrad and Leningrad region, in 1943 - Kalmyks and Karachays, in 1944 - Chechens, Ingush, Crimean Tatars, Greeks, Bulgarians, Meskhetian Turks, Kurds. There were ideological "punishments" of the leadership of Tatarstan and Bashkiria for allegedly incorrect interpretation of history.

Germany

In Germany, everything was subordinated to the provision of military needs. Millions of concentration camp prisoners and all of Europe conquered by the Nazis worked for military needs.

Hitler promised the Germans that enemies would never set foot on the territory of their country. And yet the war came to Germany. In 1940-1941, air raids began, and from 1943, when the Allies achieved complete air superiority, massive bombardments of German cities became regular. Bombs fell not only on military and industrial facilities, but also on residential areas. Dozens of cities turned into ruins.

The defeat of the Nazi troops on the Volga was a shock to the German people, their intoxication from victories began to pass quickly. In January 1943 "total mobilization" was declared throughout Germany. Compulsory labor service was introduced for all men who lived in the Third Reich at the age of 16 to 65 years and women from 17 to 45 years. In the middle of 1943, the norms for issuing meat and potatoes were reduced (250 grams of meat and 2.5 kg of potatoes per week). At the same time, the working day was extended, reaching 12 or more hours at some enterprises. Taxes have increased significantly. The huge apparatus of the Nazi Party, supported by an even larger army of "activists", closely followed every step and every word of the citizens of the Reich. The slightest manifestations of discontent immediately became known to the Gestapo. Despite some growth in anti-fascist sentiments among representatives of various sections of the German population, dissatisfaction with the regime did not acquire a mass character.

In order to suppress possible anti-fascist demonstrations at the front and in the rear, the Nazis expanded and strengthened the armed forces of the Nazi Party - the SS. The SS troops, which numbered 2 battalions before the start of the war, increased in 1943 to 5 corps. In August 1943, SS leader Himmler was appointed Minister of the Interior.

The military defeats of Germany in 1944 aggravated the crisis of the Nazi regime. With the active participation of senior officers of the Wehrmacht against Hitler, a conspiracy was organized. On July 20, 1944, the conspirators attempted to assassinate the Fuhrer - a bomb exploded in his bunker. However, Hitler suffered shell shock and burns. The main participants in the conspiracy were quickly arrested, 5 thousand people were executed, among them 56 generals and one field marshal, 49 generals and 4 field marshals (including Rommel) committed suicide without waiting for arrest. The conspiracy gave impetus to increased repression. The destruction of all opponents of the regime began, they were kept in prisons. But fascism lived out its last months.

In October 1941, the extremely reactionary government of General Tojo came to power, which became the de facto leader of Japanese policy throughout almost the entire Pacific War. In the summer of 1942, following the first defeats in the Pacific War, the internal political situation in Japan began to worsen. The militarist government, in an effort to put MPs and all leading politicians under its control, created at the end of May 1942 the "Political Association for Assistance to the Throne". Its task was to rally the nation for the successful conduct of the war. Parliament became a completely obedient mechanism in the hands of the government.

The government took measures to strengthen Japanese dominance in the occupied territories. In November 1942, the Ministry for Great East Asia was created, which dealt with all issues of administration in the occupied countries and the mobilization of their resources for the needs of Japan.

New military failures in Japan in 1943 led to a rapid decline in production in the main sectors of the Japanese economy. In the interests of the growth of military production, state regulation of the economy was expanded, and intensified exploitation of broad sections of the working people. In January 1944, the "Program of Emergency Measures for Labor Mobilization of the Population" was adopted, according to which the workers of the military-industrial companies were assigned to the enterprises where they worked. There was a broad mobilization of women and students for work in the military industry. However, it was not possible to improve the economic situation.

In June 1944, General Tojo resigned as prime minister. However, there was no softening of the political course. The course for war "until complete victory" continued. In August 1944, the Japanese government decided to arm the entire nation away. Throughout the country, the Japanese were in the workplace, in schools and universities with bamboo spears in their hands to practice defense and attack techniques.

Aerial bombardments became a real national disaster for the Japanese. In April 1942, the Japanese capital felt the horrors of war: 16 American bombers, rising from the deck of an aircraft carrier and flying 1,000 km, bombed Tokyo for the first time. After that, the Japanese capital was subjected to air strikes more than 200 times. Beginning in November 1944, the American Air Force carried out regular air raids on the cities and industrial centers of Japan, resulting in numerous civilian casualties. As a result of an air raid on March 9, 1945, 75,000 people died in Tokyo, and about a million Tokyo residents were injured in total. At that time, Japan was already on the verge of defeat.

Red Army was the only force that could defeat the Wehrmacht in World War II conventional weapons. To defeat such a skilled enemy as the Germans, it was necessary to have a sufficient number of modern weapons and an army of at least 5,000,000 in the European theater of operations, ready to suffer heavy losses. The British and Americans would never have suffered such heavy losses to defeat the Germans. Public opinion in both countries would not accept such a war, which lasted four years with millions of losses. The Russians suffered heavy losses, approaching 6.9 million killed and dying from wounds and disease, in addition to 4.6 million prisoners and missing, of which only 2,775,000 returned home after the war. The British and Americans worked together in the period from 1943 to 1945. defeated only about a hundred German divisions. If the Germans transferred more than two hundred divisions that fought on the Eastern Front to the West, the Allies would be in a very difficult position. Therefore, the question remains: would the atomic bomb be used in Europe?

On the other hand, the Red Army was able to cope with the entire power of Germany and its allies. In the summer of 1943, almost the entire German army was in the East. The occupying forces in France had only one combat-ready division, and several more newly formed divisions were in Sicily. Knowing this, Stalin was sure that he would be the winner, so the organization of the post-war world became his main concern. The help of the allies, of course, would have reduced the losses of the Russians, but this did not bother him much. In April 1945 the Red Army could have stayed waiting on the Oder until the Americans took Berlin and 250,000 Russians would not have been killed or wounded. But Stalin set up a race between the First Belorussian Front and the First Ukrainian Front, needlessly increasing the number of casualties.

Three key factors determined the victory of the USSR in World War II: the organization of a strong government, a sufficient number of weapons and ammunition, a sufficient number of reinforcements. This study takes a closer look at the first factor: combat units and how, where and why they were formed. The rallying of units from the rifle company to the army group enabled the poorly educated and inexperienced Russian peasants and workers, who were also often much older and in poorer health than their counterparts in the armies of other countries, to defeat the German army. There were quite a few important symbolic events in the Red Army: taking the oath in the presence of the regimental banner, awarding regiments and divisions with honorary titles in memory of the capture of cities, transferring the traditions of the dead unit to the newly formed one. The honorary title was left to the division even if its number and combat assignment were changed. Other factors - the supply of reinforcements and weapons - are mentioned in the discussion of the main topic, but require separate study. The purpose of this work is to tell how the Red Army was organized and functioned during the Second World War. As a result of the study, it will become clear that by the beginning of 1943 the Red Army was able to defeat the German army even without military operations in the West. Since then, Russia's strategy has been determined by the political plans and position of the USSR in the world in the post-war period.

The Soviet military writer talked about the factors that determined the ability of a nation to win the war:

Economic base
Technology Development
Military doctrine and traditions
Geographical position
Staff skills and experience
Comparative enemy strength

An advantage in most of these factors was necessary to win. The Soviet government began to work in all these areas in the 30s and early 40s, and in early 1943 achieved an advantage in all positions.

A strong economic base was created during the implementation of the five-year plans, when heavy industry was built and mass production technology was mastered. In June 1941, Germany, given the economic power of the countries it had occupied by that time, was much stronger than the Soviet Union. The loss of the western regions of the USSR in 1941 further weakened the economic base of the country. But through draconian measures and concentrated efforts, Russian military production surpassed that of Germany in early 1943.

The second factor, the development of industrial technology, was strengthened by the acquisition of technical assistance under contracts with the Americans in the 30s. Military technologies were obtained during cooperation with the German army in the 20s at the air force bases and at the tank training school, which were located on the territory of the USSR. Military skills were strengthened through the experience of the first two years of the war. In July 1943, near Kursk, the Russians seized the initiative and did not let it go until the end of the war.

Army traditions were formed by mixing the traditions of the tsarist army and the revolutionary army that defended the new government. During the war, more and more pre-revolutionary traditions were introduced into the Red Army. Military doctrine was developed in the 1930s and during the first two years of the war. Soviet military leaders learned from the military experience of the West, as well as from their own combat experience in conflicts with Japan and Finland.

The fourth factor, geographical location, did not change, but Soviet strategy and tactics were developed in order to make the most of the advantages of the environment and compensate for its shortcomings. The skills and experience of the personnel, that is, the fifth factor, improved during the reform of the Red Army in the 30s, although they did not achieve equality with the Germans by 1943.

As for the last factor, relative military power, the Russians began an arms race with the Germans in the early 1930s. For eight years, making huge investments in heavy industry, in 1937 Russia began to make weapons. But the Germans, having made a strong breakthrough, retained their qualitative and quantitative advantage until 1941. The Russians overcame their shortcomings by the beginning of 1943. Then, already on five out of six points, the Soviet Union had an advantage, which led to the final victory. The sixth factor, geographical, has always been favorable for the Russians, but the peculiarities of the climate and relief were used to the full in offensive operations of the last two years of the war.

The two main elements that led Russia to victory: production and labor. The strength of the Soviet economy, built in large part by American technical assistance in the 1930s, allowed the Russians to overtake Germany in arms production. An effective paramilitary organization of production ensured the delivery of products at the right time and in the right place. The methods of production were borrowed from the Americans, but the methods of organizing the labor force were local.

Western authors left few writings about the war on the Eastern Front, as their access to Soviet archives was limited. Few doubt that Germany lost the war on the Eastern Front. By the end of 1943, the Germans had little hope of victory, although there were still 6 months before the Allied invasion in the West. How did a backward country, the Soviet Union, defeat Germany, one of the industrial leaders of the world, which, moreover, had perhaps the most well-trained and equipped army in World War II? The most popular opinion in the West is that masses of Russian soldiers attacked the German defenses until they broke. On the other hand, the advantages of the socialist system and the heroism of individual staunch communists are emphasized.

The popular Western image of the Red Army in World War II is that of a huge army of illiterate, poorly trained, poorly dressed, poorly armed subhuman soldiers who fought only because NKVD machine gunners stood behind them. The victory of the Red Army, in the opinion of the West, became possible only by paying ten lives for one German. This image is rooted in popular Western literature.

The Soviet image of the Red Army is also quite distorted. In communist literature, the Red Army consisted of hyper-patriotic, young idealists who could hardly resist sacrificing their lives through unnecessary acts of personal heroism. According to Soviet authors, the difficult task was not to call on the troops to sacrifice their lives, but to keep them from doing so to no avail. The task of the officers was to teach them how to become good soldiers and give their lives meaningfully. The Soviet point of view was that the soldiers were imbued with patriotic fervor, conditioned by faith in the socialist system and the communist party.

Closer to the truth is that the Soviet Union surpassed Germany in the production of weapons and, willingly enduring losses, defeated her. How was a productivity win possible for a country whose steel output was more than half that of Germany and its allies? Part of the answer was Lend-Lease, which provided Russia with trucks, locomotives, rails, and other goods that covered many of the capacity gaps in Soviet industry.

The question remains: how could a country that first world war could not even provide the army with rifles, in just 25 years it surpassed most European countries in production? In the preceding period, Russia was devastated by several crises: the defeat in the First World War, the occupation by foreign troops from 1917 to 1919, the Civil War until 1921, and finally the communist regime, which destroyed the class of professionals, including army officers, engineers , government officials, transport professionals, and just about one in two people with the skills needed to keep the economy running. And this happened not once, but twice: immediately after the revolution and during the repressions in the late 1930s. The Soviet Union was in chaos until the end of the 1920s, with millions dying of starvation and industry at an impasse.

The equalization of the labor force was due to the extremely wasteful and inefficient German management of both human and industrial resources. While the Russians were squeezing the last drop out of their potential, the Germans, until the end of 1943, were only talking about total war. From the very beginning, Russia demanded incredible sacrifices from its people. Fourteen-year-old boys, women and the disabled worked in factories ten hours a day, six or seven days a week, replacing the men who had gone to the front. Every ounce of human and industrial power was called upon to win the war, taking everything out of the civilian economy, even the bare necessities. In Germany, on the contrary, until the very end of the war, there was the highest percentage of personal servants compared to any other warring country. German women were not employed in industry to any appreciable extent, and factories worked in one shift. Some teenagers served part-time in air defense units, but the schools did not close. On the other hand, the Germans continued to produce luxury items such as furniture and other civilian goods, and they also received a lot of war-useless items from the occupied countries.

Even the life of the peoples enslaved by Germany was probably more acceptable than that of the Russians who were transported to one of the new industrial centers in the Ural Mountains. The number of the Red Army rarely exceeded 6.5 million servicemen directly involved in hostilities on the Eastern Front. The total number of armed forces was about 10 million. Germany with its allies against the Russians in different periods had no more than 3 million, only sometimes exceeding this number. The Russians had a total two-fold superiority, and even more in some areas. The price of victory over Germany, as a stronger and more capable enemy, was high. Ten million Russian soldiers died against three million dead Germans and their allies on the Eastern Front (the discussion about the losses of the parties in this war is still ongoing, mainly due to the lack of complete list losses of the Red Army, in addition, the author used a very outdated source - approx. transl.). Russian losses in attacks on a highly professional enemy amounted to 3 to 1.

After the defeat of the regular divisions by the Germans in 1941, thousands of young communists from the cities were mobilized to raise the patriotic spirit and through heroic efforts to buy time, fighting to the last fighter. On the other hand, many Soviet soldiers who hated the Stalinist regime voluntarily surrendered, considering the Germans to be liberators. Soviet soldiers had no ardent love for the communist party and the socialist system. The fact that the Germans managed to attract hundreds of thousands of Soviet citizens to serve in the auxiliary units of rifle divisions, as well as to fight partisans, to work in Germany and even as soldiers in the Eastern Battalions in France, shows that there was discontent Soviet system, especially in the Baltic countries, the Caucasus and Ukraine.

The Red Army soldiers fought, like most soldiers, not brilliantly, but with a certain tenacity. The Soviet soldier fought, in all likelihood, with a sense of national pride and out of hatred for the Germans. . Within a few months of the war, the facts of the inhumane treatment of prisoners by the Germans became widely known. In the first months of the war, the Germans easily captured millions of prisoners. But after it became known about the cruelty and atrocities of the Germans, the surrender decreased sharply. The cruelty of the German policy became apparent after the liberation of the cities they captured in the winter of 1941-42, which aroused in the troops a desire for revenge.

All production facilities and labor force were used to supply the Red Army. In the first months of the war, the command of the Red Army was inexperienced, and the personnel were untrained (a very controversial statement - approx. transl.). But by 1943 combat experience had turned the Red Army into a trained, experienced, and professionally led force. By the end of the war, it was equipped with the most cost-effective weapons of any other army in World War II. To believe otherwise is to face a contradiction. How could the masses of subhumans defeat the undoubtedly best tactically trained army of Germany?

In order to make better use of materiel and personnel, the Russians have been improving training since the 1930s. The first general strategic doctrine for warfare was developed. Questions of tactics were actively discussed on the basis of the experience of military operations in Spain, on the border of Mongolia and in Finland. Then, to implement these tactics, new weapons were developed and a new organization of troops for the use of these weapons. In the end, as a matter of equal importance, a system was planned for supplying troops with personnel and for the production of weapons, ammunition and other supplies in order to create combat-ready units and compensate for losses.

The key to victory was the organization, support and supply of the Red Army. All three tasks had to be carried out in the most cost-effective way. Although the industrial base of the Soviet Union was equal to only a fraction of the potential industrial power of Germany and the Hitler-controlled countries of Europe, the difference was that the Russians were able to reduce every weapon and every organizational procedure to the minimum standards sufficient to carry out the tasks. The Soviet government, of necessity, appreciated the value of complete simplicity in the period following the 1917 revolution and the Civil War. The need to rebuild the ruined and the huge efforts to rebuild the country during the two five-year plans served as a good lesson on how to get the most return on investment, and goals should be achieved with a minimum expenditure of resources.

Russian weapons were simple, not because the soldiers were so stupid that they could not handle complex weapons, but simply everything that did not provide an advantage that compensated for the costs had to be discarded. For example, a tank T-34 had a minimum quality to perform its task, was very uncomfortable for the crew. The fighters in the tower sat on the seats on the sides, there was no floor. Shells covered with mats were stacked on the floor of the tank hull. After the first few shots, the loader would jump from his seat to the floor, with the turret spinning around him. But still, the gun and armor were excellent, and the tank itself is recognized as the best tank of the Second World War.

During the course of the war, the number of man-hours and materials needed for production T-34, constantly decreased, due to the simplification of the design. Only some design changes were made to improve combat performance at the expense of production. In contrast, German weapons were constantly becoming more complex. Only six months after the first combat use of the tank Tiger one could say that it is relatively free from technical flaws, and Panther during the Battle of Kursk still had problems. But both tanks were marvels of technical innovation.

The German command, which had a large number repair services, constantly complained about the lack of engines and spare parts needed to keep tanks and other vehicles in service. Hitler scourged the Armaments Ministry for caring more about production a large number new tanks than to repair existing ones. The Russians, on the other hand, concentrated on the production of simple, easy-to-use tanks with a limited resource, replacing worn-out or damaged ones with new ones. Broken cars were immediately dismantled for spare parts or sent to the rear for recycling at factories. Repair units were brought to the minimum staff. Rarely, if ever, were Russian prisoners cited a lack of spare parts as the reason for the lack of armaments at the front.

The excellent engines of British tanks were highly praised by Russian prisoners, but the average service life of a tank on the Eastern Front was only six months. What's the point of putting a great engine that was only developed four years ago into a tank that will be smashed before that engine reaches its end of life? Therefore, it was English tanks that were used to train drivers in order to fully use the large engine resource. The “root of evil” was in profitability. How should labor and material resources be used to their maximum advantage? The choice was simple: either one beautifully built tank with excellent optics and a comfortable crew position, or four ugly giants. The Germans chose the former and lost in production, which was one of the keys to victory.

Another key to Russian victory was organization. Its goal was again to obtain, under the prevailing conditions, the most economically effective method use of personnel and weapons. In the 1930s, the Russian military organization was in constant flux, given the radical changes in the field of strategic and tactical thinking. These changes continued until mid-1941 and caused heavy Russian losses at the start of the war. Nevertheless, the constant search for new organizational solutions was not interrupted, they were developed, tested, unsuccessful ones were discarded, but successful ones were widely implemented. The organizational structure has changed dramatically to reflect the growing diversity of weapons and their use in a limited number of personnel. While the number of fighters in the rifle division was gradually decreasing, the number of weapons increased several times. The Red Army in April 1945 was much more powerful than in June 1941. Keeping in mind the relevant events that took place in the armies of Germany, England and the USA, one can trace the appearance of a powerful machine intended to defeat Hitler. In the end, success was due to overwhelming superiority in weapons, but not in men, albeit at the cost of huge losses in personnel. By the spring of 1943, the Red Army held back Manstein's counteroffensive, which sucked Germany's strategic reserve - the occupying army in France. The final defeat of Hitler was only a matter of time.

The political decision took much longer than the military one. The Western Allies could have hastened the end, but chose not to. Stalin was given extra time to station the Red Army in the heart of Germany in order to prevent the formation of a new cordon sanitaire on the model that was created in 1919 under the Treaty of Versailles. When the war finally ended in May 1945, the Soviet Union was able to erect an iron curtain, behind which millions of peoples of Eastern Europe were captured for 40 years.

The prolongation of the war was to the advantage of the Soviet Union and worked against Britain and the United States. The continuation of the war gave Hitler additional time for the Final Solution. Most of the Jewish victims of the Holocaust were killed in the last two years of the war. How many of them could have survived if the war had ended earlier? Churchill and Roosevelt often had to make choices in the course of the war. In most cases, their decisions were not dictated by circumstances, as many claim, but were made after careful consideration of the expenditure of resources and the desired results. The main flaw in the calculations of Western leaders was a severe underestimation of the power of the Soviet Union. Instead of weakening under the blows of the Germans, by the end of the war the Red Army was strengthened. Heavy losses among the civilian population of Russia occurred in the first years of the war, but after the retreat of the Germans in 1944, there were no losses. The best goal for the West would be to end the war in 1943 or early 1944. One of the reasons why this was not done was misconception about the Red Army.

The purpose of this study is to correct this error.

Literature:

1. K. Malanin, “Development of the organizational forms of the ground forces in the Great Patriotic War” -Military history magazine, 1967, No. 8, 28 p.; G.F. Krivosheev, The secrecy stamp has been removed: the losses of the armed forces of the USSR in wars, hostilities and military conflicts. – M.: Military publishing house, 1993, pp. 130-131.

2. James F. Dunnigan, ed., The Russian Front(London: Arms and Armor Press, 1978), p. 83.

3. Alexander Werth, Russia atWar(New York: Discus Books, 1970), p. 176. At the end of June 1941, each party committee was obliged to provide from 500 to 5,000 communists to the army. A total of 95,000 party members were mobilized, of which 58,000 went to the front. In addition, at the end of June, the first working militia battalions were formed.

4. Ibid., p. 265.

5. Ibid., p. 198.

6. Ibid., p. 212-213.

Walter S. Dunn, Jr.
The Red Army was the only army that could defeat the Wehrmacht in World War II

The fighting of the Red Army in the defense of Leningrad and the defeat of the German troops blocking it. The Battle of Leningrad includes 4 strategic ( Leningrad defensive, Tikhvin, Iskra, Leningrad-Novgorod offensive) and three large independent front-line ( Lubanskaya, 3rd Sinyavinskaya, Mginskaya) operations.

Leningrad defensive operation (July 10 - September 30) began with the offensive of the German Army Group North (Field Marshal W. Leeb) on Leningrad from the Pskov region. At the same time, two Finnish armies (South-Eastern and Karelian) went on the offensive in the Karelia region. The attackers were opposed by the troops of the Northern (M.M. Popov) and Northwestern (P.L. Sobennikov) fronts. By the beginning of August the German advance had been halted by the Luga River. Tallinn, which had not yet been taken, remained in the rear, the defenders of which held the city until August 28.

On August 8, Leeb resumed the offensive from Kingisepp to Krasnogvardeysk. By August 22, the advanced units of the 18th German Army, General G. Küchler, reached the Krasnogvardeisky fortified area and tried to bypass it from the southeast. But these attempts were repulsed by the stubborn resistance of the Soviet troops. On August 23, the Headquarters divided the Northern Front into Karelian (V.A. Frolov) for the defense of the Arctic and Karelia and Leningrad (M.M. Popov, from September 5, Marshal K.E. Voroshilov). On the other wing of their offensive, the Germans occupied on August 19 Novgorod. In an effort to prevent the Germans from breaking through in this direction, the Soviet command of the forces of the North-Western Front conducted a series of powerful counterattacks south of Lake Ilmen from August 12 to 25. This onslaught was repulsed, and the Soviet troops failed to reach the rear of the Novgorod group of Germans. On August 20, the German strike force occupied Chudovo, from where it delivered a powerful blow to the north towards Lake Ladoga. On September 8, the Germans came from the south to Lake Ladoga, captured Shlisselburg and cut off Leningrad from the land. The city was under blockade.

After that, on September 9, Leeb's troops near Krasnogvardeysk again went on the offensive, trying to take Leningrad by a frontal assault. The city was defended by the 42nd General Fedyuninsky and the 55th General I.G. Lazarev army. On September 12, General G.K. was appointed commander of the Leningrad Front instead of Marshal Voroshilov. Zhukov.

At the cost of heavy losses, German troops advanced to Pulkovo Heights where the battle broke out. The Germans were stopped at the city limits, at the last tram stops. In mid-September, the Germans managed to break through in the Strelna region to the Gulf of Finland and cut off from Leningrad the troops stationed on the coast to the west of the city (the Oranienbaum region). Troops pressed to the sea Oranienbaum bridgehead, held out until the complete elimination of the blockade of Leningrad . In November 1943, the transfer of units of the 2nd shock army of Fedyuninsky began from here to unblock Leningrad.

At the same time, from September 10 to 26, Soviet troops attacked the Germans from Leningrad and Volkhov on Sinyavino in order to break the blockade of Leningrad ( 1st Sinyavino operation). The only success was the capture of a small bridgehead on the left bank of the Neva, the so-called Nevsky Piglet.

Old and new perception stereotypes in Russia and the West

The topic is constantly raised in the European information space "outrages" Red Army on the territory of the Third Reich occupied by it in 1945. How does this relate to reality – past and present? The main thing is being squeezed out of the historical memory of the Second World War - that the USSR and the Soviet people saved Europe from the destruction of entire states and peoples, and even democracy itself, at the cost of colossal losses and victims, unprecedented suffering and destruction on Soviet soil and incredible exertion of forces. Moreover, in the western zones of occupation of Germany, as documents show, there was by no means that idyll, the image of which is inspired today in the public consciousness. Eisenhower radio address "We come as winners!" meant both "the right of the victorious" and "woe to the vanquished." "Paradise life" in the Western sectors sometimes turned out to be such that even frightened by propaganda about "Russian atrocities" refugees returned to areas occupied by Soviet troops.

In January-February 1945, Soviet troops entered German soil. The day you've been waiting for so long has arrived. The thirst for revenge on the enemy "in his own lair" was one of the dominant moods in the troops, especially since it was fueled for a long time and purposefully by official propaganda.

Long before the army approached the enemy border, passing through their native land tormented by the invaders, seeing tortured women and children, burned and destroyed cities and villages, Soviet soldiers swore to take revenge on the invaders a hundredfold and thought about the time when they would enter enemy territory. And when it happened, there were – couldn't be – psychological breakdowns, especially among those who lost their loved ones and their homes. Acts of revenge were inevitable. And it was necessary to make special efforts to prevent their wide distribution.

January 19, 1945 Stalin signed a special order "On Conduct in Germany" which read: “Officers and Red Army soldiers! We are going to the country of the enemy. Everyone must maintain self-control, everyone must be brave ... The remaining population in the conquered areas, whether German, Czech, Pole, should not be subjected to violence. The guilty will be punished according to the laws of war. In the conquered territory, sexual intercourse with the female sex is not allowed. For violence and rape, the perpetrators will be shot.”.

The order was communicated to every soldier. In addition to its development, the command and political agencies of the fronts, formations and formations drew up relevant documents. These were the settings of the victorious army, but here's how Germany planned its actions in the occupied territories in 1941

According to the prescriptions of Dr. Goebbels

One of the most widespread anti-Russian myths in the West today is the topic of mass rapes allegedly committed by the Red Army in 1945 in Europe. It originates from the end of the war - from Goebbels' propaganda, and then from the publications of the former allies in the anti-Hitler coalition, who soon turned into opponents of the USSR in the Cold War.

On March 2, 1945, J. Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda of the Third Reich, wrote in his diary: “... in fact, in the face of Soviet soldiers, we are dealing with steppe scum. This is confirmed by the reports of atrocities that have come to us from the eastern regions. They are truly terrifying. They cannot even be played separately. First of all, we should mention the terrible documents that came from Upper Silesia. In some villages and cities, all women from ten to 70 years old were subjected to countless rapes. It seems that this is done by order from above, since one can see an obvious system in the behavior of the Soviet soldiery. Against this we will now launch a broad campaign at home and abroad.” .

On March 13, a new entry appears: “The war in the east will now be guided by only one feeling - the feeling of revenge. Now all compatriots believe that the Bolsheviks are committing atrocities. There is no longer a person who would ignore our warnings.". March 25: “Published reports of Soviet atrocities have provoked anger and a desire for revenge everywhere” .

Later, the assistant to the Reichskommissar Goebbels, Dr. Werner Naumann, admits: “Our propaganda about the Russians and what the population should expect from them in Berlin was so successful that we brought the Berliners to a state of extreme horror,” but “we overdid it - our propaganda hit us with a ricochet by ourselves". The German population had long been psychologically prepared for the image of an animal-like cruel "subhuman" and was ready to believe in any crimes of the Red Army.

“In an atmosphere of horror, on the verge of panic, fueled by the stories of refugees, reality was distorted, and rumors defeated facts and common sense. Terrible stories of the most nightmarish atrocities crawled through the city. Russians were described as narrow-eyed Mongols, ruthlessly and without hesitation killing women and children. It was said that priests were burned alive with flamethrowers, nuns were raped and then driven naked through the streets. They were afraid that women were turned into prostitutes, moving after military units, and men were sent to hard labor in Siberia. They even said on the radio that the Russians were nailing the tongues of the victims to the tables.

According to an Australian war correspondent Osmar White, "Goebbels' propaganda ... drove into the heads of the Germans a paranoid fear of the" hordes from the East ". When the Red Army approached the outskirts of Berlin, a wave of suicides swept the city. According to some estimates, in May-June 1945 between 30,000 and 40,000 Berliners voluntarily died» .

In his diaries, he wrote that “there was nothing new in Russophobia. The troops faced this all the way from the Rhine as they met thousands of people fleeing to the West and panic-stricken people. Russians are coming! Whatever it was, but you need to run away from them! When it was possible to question any of them, it almost always turned out that they knew nothing about the Russians. They were told so. They heard it from a friend, brother or relative who served on the Eastern Front. Well, of course, Hitler lied to them! His theories about a superior race were absurd, his claims that the British were decadent and that the Jews were subhuman, feeding on decayed brains, were lies. But, speaking of the Bolsheviks, the Fuhrer was right!»

At the same time, the allied media took up the initiative in promoting anti-Soviet horrors. Moreover, “the anti-Russian hysteria was so strong, there were so many stories about Russian atrocities that the head of the Anglo-American Bureau of Public Relations (PR) found it necessary to gather correspondents in order to give "clarification": “Remember,” he said, “that there is a strong and organized movement among the Germans aimed at sowing the seeds of mistrust among the allies. The Germans are convinced that they will benefit from a split between us. I want to warn you that to you did not believe the German stories about Russian atrocities without careful verification of their authenticity. But the Cold War was brewing. And already in 1946, Austin Epp's pamphlet "The Rape of the Women of Conquered Europe" was published in the USA.

In 1947, Ralph Killing published in Chicago the book Terrible Harvest. A costly attempt to exterminate the people of Germany”, which was based on press reports about “outrages in the Soviet zone of occupation” and materials from hearings in the American Parliament on the actions of the Red Army in post-war Germany. The rhetoric of the latter is especially revealing: “Bolshevized Mongol and Slavic hordes came from the East, immediately raping women and girls, infecting them with venereal diseases, impregnating them with the future race of Russian-German half-bloods ...” .

The next notable publications on this topic are the books by the German Erich Kube "Russians in Berlin, 1945" and the American Cornelius Ryan "The Last Battle: Storming Berlin through the eyes of eyewitnesses"; both come out in the mid 60s. Here the age range of the victims increases even in comparison with the statements of Goebbels: in the offensive zone of the Red Army, "every woman from eight to eighty years is threatened with rape." Subsequently, it is this figure that will regularly “emerge” in the publications of the Western media already at the beginning of the 21st century. However, wondering "how many women were raped" and admitting that "no one knows," Ryan says that "doctors give numbers between 20,000 and 100,000." Compared to the figures that his followers will claim, these will seem incredibly modest ...

A new surge of interest in "raped Germany" occurs in the early 90s after the collapse of the USSR. So, “in united Germany, they hastily began to print books and make films stigmatizing the Red Army and the Communists for the“ crimes of 1945 ”. For example, the famous documentary “Liberators and the Liberated. War, Violence, Children” (1992), filmed by Helke Zander and Barbara Yor, where a video sequence from the military chronicle, recordings of memories, combined with musical accompaniment, produce a strong emotional impact on the viewer.”

In the same year, a book of the same name was published in Munich, which Anthony Beevor would later actively refer to. Among the best known are Alfred de Zayas' A Terrible Revenge: The Ethnic Cleansing of East European Germans, 1944-1950 published in New York in 1994 and Norman M. Neimark's Russians in Germany. History of the Soviet zone of occupation. 1945-1949". Well, and so on.

In our country, this topic has been slightly touched upon since perestroika and glasnost in connection with references to it in the works of eminent dissidents Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Lev Kopelev. But the real information boom began in the mid-2000s, when “the wave of anti-Russian books quickly enough transferred to newspapers of the corresponding orientation, which happily began to reproduce descriptions of the horrors of“ raped Germany ”for various military anniversaries. The topic became especially fashionable after the publication in 2002 of the book “The Fall of Berlin. 1945" by the English historian Anthony Beevor, who called "absolutely fantastic data on the number of women who became victims of Soviet soldiers". After the publication of the book in Russian, myth about mass rapes began to be actively exaggerated in the Russian liberal press and on the Russian-language Internet.

Very soon it became clear that the accusations of the Red Army in crimes against the civilian population of Germany and the calls to modern Russia to "realize and repent" signify a new stage in the struggle for the history of World War II and the revision of the role of the Soviet Union in it.

The peak of massive attacks on the role of the USSR in World War II came in 2005, the year of the 60th anniversary of the Victory. The Western mass media reacted especially actively to this information occasion. So, Konstantin Eggert from the BBC complained that "the war remains the only bright spot of the Soviet period of history for the majority of the population of Russia, and therefore it is declared outside the zone of critical study and discussion ..." And, calling on Russia to "rethink the past ”, quite frankly hinted that “only a deep national crisis can today return Russians to the situation of the late eighties, when the discussion interrupted in the nineties was in full swing about Soviet history» .

In a special review by RIA Novosti, prepared on the basis of monitoring the television and radio broadcasts of 86 foreign radio stations and television companies on April 19, 2005, it was stated: “Information fuss about the historical interpretation of the Great Patriotic War not without an arsenal of horror propaganda. The reliance of journalists on subjective memoirs, the personal experience of former participants in the battles and frank conjectures of Goebbels' propaganda leads to the fact that images associated with revenge, hatred and violence come to the fore, which do little to consolidate public opinion and resurrect former foreign policy attitudes. The presence of the "dark side" of the liberation feat of the Red Army is postulated, which is allegedly hushed up in modern Russia.

"Scientific" methods of Mr. E. Beevor and Co.

In this context, the mythology regarding the mass rape of German women by Soviet soldiers, allegedly in the absence of such facts in the offensive zone of the Western Allies, took a special place and was actively discussed by the Western media. In particular, the mentioned book by Anthony Beevor "The Fall of Berlin, 1945" in 2002 caused a whole series of scandalous publications.

Yes, in the paper The Daily Telegraph in an article under the eloquent title "Red Army troops even raped Russian women whom they released from the camps," it said: "Soviet soldiers considered rape, often carried out in front of a woman's husband and family members, as a suitable way to humiliate the German nation, which considered the Slavs an inferior race , with whom sexual contacts were not encouraged. Russian patriarchal society and the habit of revelry also played a role, but more important was the indignation at the sight of the relatively high welfare of the Germans.

The article sparked an angry letter to the ambassador's editor Russian Federation in the UK by Grigory Karasin on January 25, 2002.

The "scientific conscientiousness" of the English author can be judged by a specific example. The following text caused the greatest excitement in the Western media: “The most shocking, from the Russian point of view, are the facts of violence by Soviet soldiers and officers committed against Ukrainian, Russian and Belarusian women and girls released from German work camps” with reference to my book “Psychology wars in the 20th century. The historical experience of Russia".

However, depending on its specific stage and the conditions associated with it, the attitude towards the enemy acquired various shades. So, a new, more complex range of feelings began to manifest itself in Soviet soldiers and officers in connection with the transfer of hostilities outside our country, to foreign, including enemy, territory. Many military personnel believed that as winners they could afford everything, including arbitrariness against the civilian population.

Negative phenomena in the liberating army caused tangible damage to the prestige of the Soviet Union and its armed forces, could adversely affect future relations with the countries through which our troops passed. The Soviet command had to pay attention again and again to the state of discipline in the troops, conduct explanatory conversations with personnel, adopt special directives and issue harsh orders. The Soviet Union had to show the peoples of Europe that it was not the "horde of Asians" that had entered their land, but the army of a civilized state. Therefore, purely criminal offenses in the eyes of the leadership of the USSR acquired a political coloring. In this regard, on the personal instructions of Stalin, several show trials were held with the death sentences for the guilty, and the NKVD authorities regularly informed the military command about their measures to combat the facts of robbery against the civilian population ... ".

Well, where are the "facts of violence by Soviet soldiers and officers committed against Ukrainian, Russian and Belarusian women and girls liberated from German work camps"? Perhaps, Mr. Beevor meant that this was mentioned in the work of M.I. Semiryaga, to which I refer? But there is nothing of the kind there: neither on pages 314-315, nor on any others! However, in the West, Mr. Beevor's statements are regarded as absolutely reliable.

So, K. Eggert in the article “Memory and Truth”, written in 2005 for the BBC project on the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II, wrote: “When Anthony Beevor’s book “The Fall of Berlin” (now translated in Russia by the AST publishing house), the Russian ambassador to the UK, Grigory Karasin, wrote an angry letter to the Daily Telegraph newspaper. The diplomat accused the well-known military historian of slandering the glorious feat of Soviet soldiers. Cause? Beevor, based on documents from the main military archive in Podolsk, spoke, among other things, about the atrocities that Soviet soldiers committed in liberated Poland, East Prussia and in Berlin itself. Historians from Russian Academy Sciences, the book "The Fall of Berlin" was condemned almost before the ambassador. Meanwhile, the reference apparatus of Beevor's book is in perfect order: incoming and outgoing numbers of reports, a folder, a shelf, and so on. That is, you cannot accuse a writer of lying.

But if such an obvious fraud is allowed in this particular example, where is the guarantee that the other so-called facts given in Mr. Beevor's book are not fabricated according to the same "method"? Many falsifications are based on this simple calculation: the reference apparatus looks solid and convincing, especially for an inexperienced reader, and it is unlikely that anyone will check each of the 1007 author's footnotes in the archive and library ...

However, some check- and find a lot of interesting things. It was with the light hand of Beevor that the “accurate statistics” were launched and subsequently replicated in thousands of publications - two million German women were raped, of which one hundred thousand were in Berlin.

In his book, he writes: “Berliners remember the piercing screams at night that were heard in houses with broken windows. According to the estimates of the two main Berlin hospitals, the number of victims raped by Soviet soldiers ranges from ninety-five to one hundred and thirty thousand people. One Doctor concluded that in Berlin alone, about one hundred thousand women were raped. And about ten thousand of them died mainly as a result of suicide. The number of deaths throughout East Germany must be much higher if one takes into account the 1400,000 rapes in East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia. It appears that in total about two million German women were raped, many of whom (if not most) suffered this humiliation several times.

At the same time, he refers to the book “Liberators and Liberated” by Helke Sander and Barbara Yohr, where the calculations are made on the data not of “the two main Berlin hospitals”, but one children's clinic, i.e. "to add solidity" makes quite a conscious twitch. Not to mention the fact that these data are very doubtful, since the system of calculations by Barbara Yor, based on an arbitrary extrapolation of the number of children whose fathers are named Russians, born in 1945 and 1946. and examined in one Berlin clinic, on the total number of female population of East Germany aged "from 8 to 80 years", does not stand up to scrutiny. The result of such a "generalization" of individual cases implies that "every 6th East German woman, regardless of age, was raped by the Red Army at least once."

But even where E. Beevor refers to real archival documents, this does not prove anything. The Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation does indeed store materials from political departments with reports that contain the minutes of Red Army, Komsomol and party meetings describing cases of deviant behavior of servicemen. These are chubby folders, the contents of which are solid rubbish. But they were completed precisely “thematically”, as evidenced by their very names: “Emergency events and immoral phenomena” for such and such a period in such and such a military unit. By the way, these names already show that such phenomena were considered by the army leadership not as a behavioral norm, but as extraordinary event requiring decisive action.

There are also materials of military tribunals in the archive - investigation cases, sentences, etc., where you can find many negative examples, because it is there that such information is concentrated. But the fact is that the perpetrators of these crimes amounted to no more than 2% of the total number of servicemen. And authors like Mr. Beevor extend their accusations to the entire Soviet Army as a whole. Unfortunately, not only foreign ones. It is noteworthy that Beevor's book was translated into Russian and published in Russia in 2004, just on the eve of the anniversary of the Victory.

In 2005, another "revealing sensation" from the former allies in the anti-Hitler coalition followed: "... in the West, a new book by the British military historian Max Hastings" Armageddon: The Battle for Germany, 1944-1945 ", dedicated to the crimes of the Soviet Army against peaceful population of Germany and German prisoners of war. The historian draws literally the ritual retribution inflicted by the Soviet Army on the Germans who were losing the war, and even calls it "primitive" rape "of an entire nation."

In 2006, a book by the German author Joachim Hoffmann “Stalin's War of Extermination (1941-1945)” was published in Russian. Planning, Implementation, Documents”, which has been widely distributed abroad since the mid-1990s and has gone through four editions only in Germany. At the same time, the preface to the Russian edition states that this work “is one of the best historical studies of the “dark spots” of the Soviet-German war”, and its author is “one of the most prominent representatives of the direction of West German historical science, which defended the postulate that in 1941 -1945, the war was fought between two criminal regimes: Hitler's Germany and Stalin's USSR.

Naturally, several chapters are devoted to the last months of the war from a very specific angle, as evidenced by their titles: "No mercy, no condescension." Atrocities of the Red Army during the advance on German soil”, “Woe to you, Germany!” Atrocities find their continuation. A list of literature of this kind, reviving the spirit and letter of Goebbels propaganda in new historical conditions, you can go on for quite some time.

Information warfare in electronic media

A real information war has unfolded in the vastness of the Russian-language Internet. So, in May 2005, a certain Yu. Nesterenko wrote an article “Day of National Shame”, initiating an indefinite action “Anti-Victory”, within which “numerous testimonies of the monstrous crimes of the Soviet“ liberators ”(who often surpassed the worst acts of the Nazis in cruelty )": "...Instead of inflating another propaganda hysteria and demanding gratitude from the raped for the pleasure, we must put an end to the practice of many years of hypocritical lies and double standards, stop honoring the servants of the criminal regime and repent before all those who innocently suffered from the actions of "soldiers- liberators” – this is the main message of the organizer of the action.

In May 2009, also on the eve of Victory Day, A. Shiropaev’s provocative post “The Grave of the Unknown Rapist” appeared, exposing our veterans as pedophile rapists, which received a huge number of comments and hung in the top of Yandex for a long time. On Wikipedia, many pages are directly or indirectly devoted to the topic of rape at the end of the war: “Violence against the civilian population of Germany (1945)”, “Deportation of Germans after World War II”, “German population in East Prussia after World War II” , "Murder in Nemmersdorf", "The Fall of Berlin. 1945" and others.

And the radio station "Echo of Moscow" (2009) in the program "The Price of Victory" twice conducted programs on "painful topics" - "The Wehrmacht and the Red Army against the civilian population" (February 16) and "The Red Army on German territory"(October 26), inviting G. Bordyugov and the infamous M. Solonin to the studio. Finally, in 2010, the year of the 65th anniversary of the Victory, another anti-Russian wave arose that swept across Europe and was especially noticeable in Germany.

“Sometimes a pitiful thought slips through the Russian Internet that the Germans are so poor, they are tired of repenting,” writes A. Tyurin on Pravaya.ru. “There is no need to worry, even under the anti-fascist Chancellor Willy Brandt, Germany did not apologize for its crimes committed in Russia.”

And he shares his observations with readers: “While the German chancellor was looking at the Victory Parade, a Russophobic orgy was raging in Germany. The Russians who defeated Hitler were shown as a horde of subhumans - quite according to Goebbels' patterns. For three days in a row I watched programs on German state and commercial information channels dedicated to the end of World War II in Europe and the first post-war weeks. There are a lot of programs, both documentary and artistic. The general theme is this. Americans are humanists, breadwinners... Russians are robbers and rapists. The theme of the crimes of the Wehrmacht against the civilian population of the USSR missing. The number of dead Soviet people in the zone of German-Romanian-Finnish occupation is not given.

Having taken Berlin, the Russians feed the poor Berliners badly, bring them to dystrophy, but they drag everything in a row and rape them. And here the artistic television series “One Woman in Berlin” is characteristic (central channel ZDF). The Russians are shown not as an army, but as a horde. Against the background of thin, pale, spiritualized German faces, these terrible Russian muzzles, gaping mouths, thick cheeks, greasy eyes, nasty smiles. The horde is precisely Russian, there are no nationalists, except for one Asian soldier, whom the Russians call "hey, Mongol."

Similar propaganda cliches splashed into art, emotionally affect the audience, are firmly fixed in the mass consciousness, form not only a distorted "retrospective" view of the events of the Second World War, but also image of modern Russia and Russians.

At the same time, as a result of a powerful information war, the term “liberation mission” itself is subjected to the most violent attacks by anti-Russian forces both in the West and within the country. The desire to rewrite the history of the Second World War comes from the states of the former socialist bloc, which today turned out to be NATO members, and from the former Soviet republics of the USSR, gravitating towards the West, and from the countries that were former opponents of the USSR in World War II, and from the countries that were former allies in the anti-Hitler coalition.

The general leitmotif of these attacks is an attempt to replace "liberation" with "occupation", the desire to present the liberation mission of the USSR in Europe as a "new enslavement" of the countries that found themselves in the sphere of Soviet influence, accusations not only against the USSR and the Soviet Army, but also against Russia as the legal successor of the Soviet Union in the imposition of totalitarian regimes in Central and Eastern Europe, in crimes against the civilian population, demands against it " confess" And " to pay damages».

Limits of hate, limits of revenge

However, the morality of war is completely different from the morality of peacetime. And it is possible to evaluate those events only in a general historical context, without dividing, and even more so, without substituting cause and effect. It is impossible to put an equal sign between the victim of aggression and the aggressor, especially one whose goal was the destruction of entire nations. Fascist Germany itself placed itself outside morality and outside the law. Should we be surprised at the acts of spontaneous revenge on the part of those whose loved ones she cold-bloodedly and methodically destroyed for several years in the most sophisticated and savage ways?

During the Great Patriotic War, the theme of retribution was one of the central ones in agitation and propaganda, as well as in the thoughts and feelings of the Soviet people. Long before the army approached the enemy border, passing through their native land tormented by the occupiers, seeing tortured women and children, burned and destroyed cities and villages, Soviet soldiers swore to take revenge on the invaders a hundredfold and often thought about the time when they would enter enemy territory. And when it happened, they were - they couldn't help but be! - psychological breakdowns, especially among those who have lost their families.

In January-February 1945, Soviet troops launched the Vistula-Oder and East Prussian offensive operations and entered German soil. “Here it is, damn Germany!”- wrote on one of the home-made shields near the burned-out house a Russian soldier who was the first to cross the border. The day you've been waiting for so long has arrived. And at every step, Soviet soldiers came across things with our factory marks, stolen by the Nazis; compatriots released from captivity spoke about the horrors and abuses they experienced in German slavery. The German inhabitants, who supported Hitler and welcomed the war, shamelessly used the fruits of the robbery of other peoples, did not expect that the war would return to where it started - to the territory of Germany. And now these "civilian" the Germans, frightened and ingratiating, with white bandages on their sleeves, were afraid to look into the eyes, expecting retribution for everything that their army had done in a foreign land.

However, after our army went beyond the state border of the USSR, the Soviet government had other considerations, dictated by plans for a post-war structure in Europe. The political assessment "Hitlers come and go, but the German people, and the German state remains" (Order No. 55 of the People's Commissar of Defense of February 23, 1942) was actively adopted by propaganda and was of considerable importance for the formation of a new (and, in fact, reanimated old , pre-war) psychological attitude of the Soviet people towards the enemy. But it is one thing to understand this obvious truth with the mind, and quite another to rise above one's grief and hatred, not to give free rein to the blind thirst for revenge. The clarifications of the political departments that followed at the beginning of 1945 about “how one should behave” on German territory came as a surprise to many and were often rejected.

Here is how the front-line writer D. Samoilov recalled this: “The slogan “Kill the German!”” solved the old question by the method of Tsar Herod. And all the years of the war was not in doubt. “Clarification” on April 17 (an article by Aleksandrov, the then head of our propaganda, which criticized the position of Ilya Ehrenburg - “Kill the German!” - and interpreted the question of the responsibility of the German nation for the war in a new way) and especially Stalin’s words about Hitler and the people were, as it were, canceled previous look. The army, however, understood the political implications of these statements. Her emotional state and moral concepts could not accept pardon and amnesty for the people who brought so many misfortunes to Russia.

The pattern of hatred for Germany on the part of the Soviet troops entering its territory was understood at that time by the Germans themselves. Here is what 16-year-old Dieter Borkovsky wrote in his diary on April 15, 1945 about the mood of the Berlin population: There were many women on the train with us - refugees from the Russian-occupied eastern districts of Berlin. They dragged with them all their possessions: a stuffed backpack. Nothing more. Horror froze on their faces, anger and despair filled people! I have never heard such curses before ... Then someone yelled, blocking the noise: “Quiet!” We saw a nondescript, dirty soldier wearing two iron crosses and a gold German cross. On his sleeve he had a patch with four small metal tanks, which meant that he had knocked out 4 tanks in close combat.

“I want to tell you something,” he shouted, and there was silence in the train car. “Even if you don't want to listen! Stop whining! We must win this war, we must not lose courage. If others win - Russians, Poles, French, Czechs - and at least for one percent if they do to our people what we have done to them for six years in a row, then in a few weeks not a single German will be left alive. This is what the one who himself was in the occupied countries for six years is telling you!”. It became so quiet in the train that one could hear a hairpin fall.

This soldier knew what he was talking about. Acts of revenge were inevitable. The leadership of the Soviet Army took severe measures against violence and atrocities against the German population, declaring such actions criminal and unacceptable, and bringing those responsible to trial by a military tribunal up to and including execution.

On January 19, 1945, Stalin signed a special order "On Conduct on the Territory of Germany". The order was communicated to every soldier. In addition to its development, the command and political agencies of the fronts, formations and formations drew up relevant documents. So, having entered the lands of East Prussia, on January 21, 1945, the commander of the 2nd Belorussian Front, Marshal K.K. Rokossovsky issued order No. 006, designed to "direct the feeling of hatred of people to exterminate the enemy on the battlefield", punishing for looting, violence, robbery, senseless arson and destruction. The danger of such phenomena for the morale and combat effectiveness of the army was noted.

On January 27, the same order was issued by the commander of the 1st Ukrainian Front, Marshal I.S. Konev. On January 29, in all battalions of the 1st Belorussian Front, the order of the marshal was read G.K. Zhukov, which forbade the Red Army soldiers "to oppress the German population, rob apartments and burn houses." On April 20, 1945, a special directive from the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command on the conduct of Soviet troops in Germany was adopted. And although “it was not completely possible to prevent cases of violence, they managed to contain it, and then reduce it to a minimum” .

Political workers themselves paid attention to the contradictions of political attitudes before and after entering enemy territory. This is evidenced by the speech on February 6, 1945 by the head of the Political Directorate of the 2nd Belorussian Front, Lieutenant General A.D. Okorokova at a meeting of employees of the department of agitation and propaganda of the front and Glavpur of the Red Army on the moral and political state of the Soviet troops on enemy territory: “... The question of hatred for the enemy. The mood of people now boils down to what they said, they say, one thing, but now it turns out another. When our political workers began to explain order No. 006, there were exclamations: is this not a provocation? In the division of General Kustov, during the interviews, there were such responses: “These are political workers! They told us one thing, and now another!”

Moreover, it must be said frankly that stupid political workers began to consider Order No. 006 as a turn in politics, as a refusal to take revenge on the enemy. We must wage a resolute fight against this, explaining that the feeling of hatred is our sacred feeling, that we have never given up revenge, that it is not a question of turning around, but of explain correctly question.

Of course, the influx of feelings of revenge among our people is enormous, and this influx of feelings has led our fighters to the lair of the fascist beast and will lead them further to Germany. But you can not equate revenge with drunkenness, arson. I burned down the house, and there is nowhere to put the wounded. Is this revenge? I wantonly destroy property. This is not an expression of revenge. We must explain that all property, livestock was won with the blood of our people, that we must take all this to ourselves and, through this, to some extent strengthen the economy of our state in order to become even stronger than the Germans.

The soldier just needs clarify, to tell him simply that we have conquered it and must treat the conquered in a businesslike way. Explain that if you kill some old German woman in the rear, then the death of Germany will not accelerate from this. Here is a German soldier - destroy him, and take the surrendering prisoner to the rear. Direct the feeling of hatred of people to exterminate the enemy on the battlefield. And our people understand this. One said that I was ashamed of what I used to think - I would burn the house and by this I would take revenge.

Our Soviet people are organized and they will understand the essence of the matter. Now there is a decree of the GKO that all able-bodied German men from 17 to 55 years old be mobilized into work battalions and sent with our officer cadres to Ukraine and Belarus for restoration work. When we truly instill in a fighter a feeling of hatred for the Germans, then the fighter will not climb a German woman, because he will be disgusted. Here we will need to correct the shortcomings, direct the feeling of hatred towards the enemy in the right direction» .

And indeed, a lot of work had to be done to change the attitude of the army to the revenge of Germany, formed by the course of the war itself and the previous political work. I had to again breed the concepts of "fascist" and "German" in the minds of people.

“The political departments are doing a lot of work among the troops, explaining how to behave with the population, distinguishing incorrigible enemies from honest people, with whom we probably still have to work a lot. Who knows, maybe they will still have to help restore everything that was destroyed by the war, - wrote in the spring of 1945 an employee of the headquarters of the 1st Guards Tank Army E.S. Katukov. - To tell the truth, many of our fighters hardly accept this line of tactful treatment of the population, especially those whose families suffered from the Nazis during the occupation. But our discipline is strict. Probably years will pass, and much will change. We will, perhaps, even visit the Germans to look at the current battlefields. But much before that must burn out and boil in the soul, everything that we experienced from the Nazis, all these horrors, is still too close ... ".

Various kinds of "emergency events and immoral phenomena" in the units of the advancing Red Army were carefully recorded by special departments, military prosecutors, political workers, were suppressed if possible and severely punished. However, they messed around mostly rear and cursers. The combat units were simply not up to it - they fought. Their hatred spilled out on the enemy armed and resisting. And those who tried to stay away from the front line “fought” with women and old people.

Recalling the battles in East Prussia, Lev Kopelev, a former political worker, later a writer and dissident, said: “I don’t know the statistics: how many scoundrels, marauders, rapists there were among our soldiers, I don’t know. I'm sure they made tiny minority. However, it was they who made, so to speak, an indelible impression.

It should be noted that many soldiers and officers themselves resolutely fought against robberies and violence. The harsh sentences of the military tribunals also contributed to their suppression. According to the military prosecutor's office, “in the first months of 1945, 4,148 officers and a large number of privates were convicted by military tribunals for committing atrocities against the local population. Several show trials of military personnel ended with the death sentences for those responsible.

At the same time, if we turn to the documents German side, we will see that even before the start of the war against the USSR it was pre-announced that "in the fight against Bolshevism it is impossible to build relations with the enemy on the principles of humanism and international law", thereby initially any infringement was allowed international law in the future relations of the German troops to the civilian population and Soviet prisoners of war.

As one of the numerous examples of policy statements of the German leadership, let us quote the Decree of Hitler as the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Wehrmacht of May 13, 1941 on military justice in the war against Soviet Union: “For acts against enemy civilians committed by Wehrmacht soldiers and civilians, there will be no mandatory prosecution, even if the act is a war crime or misdemeanor ... The judge prescribes the prosecution of acts against local residents in a military court only when it comes to non-compliance with military discipline or the emergence of a threat to the security of the troops.

Or let us recall the famous “Memo of a German Soldier” (which became one of the documents of the prosecution at the Nuremberg Trials), where such “humane” calls were made: "Remember and do»:

1) ... No nerves, heart, pity - you are made of German iron ...

2) ... Destroy pity and compassion in yourself, kill every Russian, do not stop if there is an old man or a woman, a girl or a boy in front of you ...

3) ... We will bring the whole world to its knees ... The German is the absolute master of the world. You will decide the fate of England, Russia, America ... destroy all living things that resist on your way ... Tomorrow the whole world will kneel before you.

“At the end of the first day of my stay in Berlin,” he wrote in his diary, “I was sure that the city was dead. Human beings could not live in this horrendous pile of rubbish. By the end of the first week, my perceptions began to change. Society began to revive among the ruins. Berliners began to receive food and water in quantities sufficient to survive. More and more people were employed in public works carried out under the direction of the Russians. Thanks to the Russians, who have extensive experience in dealing with such problems in their own devastated cities, the spread of epidemics was brought under control. I am convinced that the Soviets in those days did more to keep Berlin alive than the Anglo-Americans could have done in their place.

Russian methods of maintaining order and achieving results in the most essential did not have such a deterrent as good-heartedness. They understood the psychology of the masses and knew that the sooner the Berliners were inspired to help themselves, the better it would be for everyone. A few days after the surrender, they supported the idea of publishing newspapers. Then they restored radio broadcasting, allowed the organization of entertainment events and announced that they would approve the creation of trade unions and democratic political parties ... ".

He goes on to write, focusing on the reactions of the Germans themselves: “Radio, newspapers, politics, concerts... The Russians wisely fueled the rebirth in the desert of despair. They are showed generosity to the followers of the monster lying in his lair under the mountains of rubble. But the Berliners did not look at the world the way the Russians would have liked. Whispering was heard everywhere: “Thank God that you - the British and Americans - came here. Russians are animals, they took away everything that was from me ... they rape, steal and shoot ... ".

In this regard, it is worth citing the story of one veteran, mortar N.A. Orlov, shocked by the behavior of the Germans (and German women) in 1945: “No one in the minbat killed civilian Germans. Our special officer was a "Germanophile". If this happened, then the reaction of the punitive authorities to such an excess would be quick. About violence against German women. It seems to me that some, when talking about such a phenomenon, “exaggerate” a little. I have a different kind of example. We went to some German city, settled in the houses. A frau, about 45 years old, appears and asks for "herr commandant." They brought her to Marchenko. She claims to be in charge of the quarter, and brought together 20 German women for sexual (!!!) service Russian soldiers. Marchenko understood the German language, and I translated the meaning of what the German woman said to the political officer Dolgoborodov who was standing next to me. The reaction of our officers was angry and obscene. The German woman was driven away, along with her “detachment” ready for service.

In general, German obedience stunned us. Expected from the Germans guerrilla war, sabotage. But for this nation, order - "Ordnung" - is above all. If you are a winner, then they are “on their hind legs”, moreover, consciously and not under duress. Here such a psychology. Once again I say, I do not remember that someone from my company raped a German woman. There are few people in the minrote, such “deeds” would sooner or later become known to their comrades. My tongue is my enemy, one of my own people would blurt out something, the main thing is not to the special officer ... ".

Continuing the theme of "German obedience", a few more documents should be cited. In the report of the Deputy Head of the Main Political Directorate of the Red Army Shikin to the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks G.F. Aleksandrov of April 30, 1945 on the attitude of the civilian population of Berlin to the personnel of the Red Army troops said: “As soon as our units occupy one or another area of the city, the inhabitants begin to gradually take to the streets, almost all of them have white armbands on their sleeves. When meeting with our servicemen, many women raise their hands up, cry and tremble with fear, but as soon as they are convinced that the soldiers and officers of the Red Army are not at all the same as they were painted by their fascist propaganda, this fear quickly passes, more and more more population takes to the streets and offers his services, trying in every possible way to emphasize his loyal attitude to the Red Army ... ".

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V. Medinsky refers to the publication "Orders of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief during the Great Patriotic War." M.: Military Publishing House, 1975.

Such a collection of documents was published, but the aforementioned order for January 19, 1945 is not there. It is not in other publications of documents either: neither in the orders of the People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR, nor in the directives of the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command for 1945 (see: Russian archive: Great Patriotic War. Orders of the People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR (1943-1945). Vol. 13 (2-3), M.: Terra, 1997, Russian Archive: Great Patriotic War, Headquarters of the Supreme High Command: Documents and Materials 1944-1945, Vol. 16(5-4), M.: Terra, 1999).

The text of Stalin's order of January 19, 1945 "On behavior in Germany" has not yet been found in the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation. But foreign publications are full of references to it, dissidents L. Kopelev and A. Solzhenitsyn mentioned it. The existence of orders of the front commanders Zhukov, Konev and Rokossovsky with similar content, dated at the end of January 1945, has been undeniably proven, and this indirectly confirms that in some form (written - under the heading "top secret", or oral, which is also possible) such an order of Stalin also existed, but until the original is found, one cannot be responsible for the accuracy of its quotation.

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From September 1 to December 31, 1945 - 12 out of a total of 237 newborns examined in the children's clinic "Empress Augusta Victoria" in Berlin, they were recognized as "Russians", and only in five cases "rape" was indicated; from 1.01. to December 31, 1946 - 20 out of 567 newborns are recognized as "Russian", and rape is indicated in four cases, however, Yor extends the category of raped mothers to all whose children are born from Russians.

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Cit. by: Tazhidinova I.G. The value of things: the dimension of wartime // Problems Russian history. M.; Magnitogorsk, 2010. Issue. H. S. 497, 496.

From an interview with Orlov Naum Aronovich on the site "I remember" // URL: http:// www.iremember.ru/minometchiki/orlov-naum-aronovich/stranitsa-6.html

Correspondence between Yu.P. Sharapov and N.N. Reshetnikova. 1942-1945 // Personal archive.

Aleksievich S. War has an unfeminine face. Minsk, 1985. S. 301-302.

Communist. 1975. No. 4. S. 73-74

Ortenberg D.I. Forty-third: Story-chronicle. M., 1991. S. 120.

Samoilov D. People of one variant. (From military notes) // Aurora. 1990. No. 2. S. 93.

Power. 2000. No. 6(357). S. 47.

Lavrenov S.Ya., Popov I.M. The collapse of the Third Reich. M., 2000. S. 370-371.

Sherstyanoy E. Germany and the Germans in the letters of the Red Army in the spring of 1945 // New and recent history. 2002. No. 2. S. 148.

Aftalion F. Moscow must pay the debt of memory (Le Figaro, France) // URL: http://www.inosmi.ru/stories/05/04/14/3445/220328.html

The footage that became the national shame of France // URL: http://svpressa.ru/war/photo/6743

The fight against fascism in French... // URL: http://szhaman.livejournal.com/219207.html

Ryurup R. The Germans and the war against the Soviet Union // Free Thought. 1994. No. 11. P. 80.

From the press release “On the Anniversary of the Victory Abroad” dated May 7, 2005, posted on the website of the Russian Foreign Ministry: http://www.ln.mid.ru/brp_4.nsf/sps/091195668ECBC03FC3256FFA004E45E8

Cit. by: Vladimirsky A. Pre-anniversary "alternative history": the Molotov-Ribentrop Pact, the occupation of the Baltic states and the Katyn case in the Russian media and the Internet // 60th anniversary of the end of World War II and the Great Patriotic War: winners and losers in the context of politics, mythology and memory. Materials for the International Forum (Moscow, September 2005), ed. F. Bomsdorf and G. Bordyugov. Liberal Reading Library. M., 2005. Issue. 16. S. 228.

Today, “the period of occupation in France is preferred to be remembered as a heroic time. Charles de Gaulle, Resistance... However, the impartial footage of the photo chronicle shows that everything was not quite the way the veterans tell and write in the history books.

Not so long ago, an exhibition of a French photographer was held in the Paris Historical Library Andre Zucca"The French under occupation" (and more). The exhibition featured more than 250 color photographs taken between 1941 and 1944.

Photos show how Parisians enjoyed life on the banks of the Seine, in cafes and city parks, on the sun-drenched Champs-Elysées. Parisian fashionistas flaunt new hats, lovers embrace, children roller-skate, people ride bicycles, feed the elephant in the city zoo...

Nazi officers walk with the townspeople. “The picture is simply idyllic”, “the general impression of a peaceful and not at all unhappy life”, which is not at all overshadowed by red flags with a black swastika. The exhibition caused a huge scandal, the mayor's office of the French capital banned its display in Paris. City council member and head of the department of culture, Christophe Girard, told reporters that the exhibit was "unbearable".

Senyavskaya Elena Spartakovna

leading Researcher Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Professor of the Department of Modern Russian History of the Russian State Humanitarian University, full member of the Academy of Military Sciences, Doctor of Historical Sciences.

Senyavskaya Elena Spartakovna - Doctor of Historical Sciences, Leading Researcher at the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Professor at the Department of Contemporary Russian History at the Russian State University for the Humanities, laureate of the State Prize of the Russian Federation, full member of the Academy of Military Sciences

In the European information space, the topic of the “outrages” of the Red Army on the territory of the Third Reich occupied by it in 1945 is constantly raised. How does this relate to reality - past and present?

According to the prescriptions of Dr. Goebbels

On March 2, 1945, the Minister of Propaganda of the Third Reich, J. Goebbels, wrote in his diary: “... in fact, in the person of Soviet soldiers, we are dealing with steppe scum. This is confirmed by the reports of atrocities that have come to us from the eastern regions. They are truly terrifying. They cannot even be played separately. First of all, mention should be made of the terrible documents that came from Upper Silesia. In some villages and cities, all women from ten to 70 years old were subjected to countless rapes. It seems that this is done by order from above, since one can see an obvious system in the behavior of the Soviet soldiery. Against this we will now launch a broad campaign at home and abroad. On March 13, a new entry appears: “The war in the east will now be guided by only one feeling - the feeling of revenge. Now all compatriots believe that the Bolsheviks are committing atrocities. There is no longer a person who would ignore our warnings.

Later, the assistant to the Reichskommissar Goebbels, Dr. Werner Naumann, admits: “Our propaganda about the Russians and what the population should expect from them in Berlin was so successful that we brought the Berliners to a state of extreme horror,” but “we overdid it - our propaganda rebounded on us ourselves." The German population had long been psychologically prepared for the image of a brutally cruel “subhuman” and was ready to believe in any crimes of the Red Army.

According to the Australian war correspondent Osmar White, "Goebbels' propaganda . When the Red Army approached the outskirts of Berlin, a wave of suicides swept the city. According to some estimates, in May-June 1945, from 30 to 40 thousand Berliners voluntarily died.

At the same time, the allied media took up the initiative in promoting anti-Soviet horrors. Moreover, “the anti-Russian hysteria was so strong, there were so many stories about Russian atrocities that the chief of the Anglo-American Bureau of Public Relations (PR) found it necessary to gather correspondents in order to give “explanations”: “Remember,” he said, “that there is a strong and organized movement among the Germans aimed at sowing the seeds of mistrust among the allies. The Germans are convinced that they will benefit from a split between us. I want to warn you not to believe German stories about Russian atrocities without carefully checking their veracity." But the Cold War was brewing. And already in 1946, Austin Epp's pamphlet "The Rape of the Women of Conquered Europe" was published in the USA.

In 1947, Ralph Killing published in Chicago the book Terrible Harvest. An Expensive Attempt to Exterminate the People of Germany”, which was based on press reports about “outrages in the Soviet zone of occupation” and materials from hearings in the American Parliament on the actions of the Red Army in post-war Germany. The rhetoric of the latter is especially revealing: “Bolshevized Mongol and Slavic hordes came from the East, immediately raping women and girls, infecting them with venereal diseases, impregnating them with the future race of Russian-German half-breeds ...” .

In our country, this topic has been slightly touched upon since perestroika and glasnost in connection with references to it in the works of eminent dissidents Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Lev Kopelev. But the real information boom began in the mid-2000s, when “the wave of anti-Russian books quickly enough transferred to newspapers of the corresponding orientation, which happily began to reproduce descriptions of the horrors of “raped Germany” for various military anniversaries.” The topic became especially fashionable after the publication in 2002 of the book “The Fall of Berlin. 1945" by the English historian Anthony Beevor, who called "absolutely fantastic data on the number of women who became victims of Soviet soldiers." After the publication of the book in Russian, the myth of mass rape began to be actively exaggerated in the Russian liberal press and on the Russian-language Internet.

The peak of massive attacks on the role of the USSR in World War II came in 2005, the year of the 60th anniversary of the Victory. In a special review by RIA Novosti, prepared on the basis of monitoring the television and radio broadcasts of 86 foreign radio stations and television companies on April 19, 2005, it was stated: “Information fuss about the historical interpretation of the Great Patriotic War is not complete without an arsenal of horror propaganda. The reliance of journalists on subjective memoirs, the personal experience of former participants in the battles and frank conjectures of Goebbels' propaganda leads to the fact that images associated with revenge, hatred and violence come to the fore, which do little to consolidate public opinion and resurrect former foreign policy attitudes. The presence of the "dark side" of the liberation feat of the Red Army, which is supposedly hushed up in modern Russia, is postulated.

"Scientific" methods of Mr. E. Beevor and Co.

The "scientific conscientiousness" of the English author can be judged by a specific example. The following text caused the greatest excitement in the Western media: “The most shocking, from the Russian point of view, are the facts of violence committed by Soviet soldiers and officers against Ukrainian, Russian and Belarusian women and girls released from German work camps” with reference to my book “Psychology wars in the 20th century. Historical experience of Russia.

In the monograph of the author of the article we read something that can be indirectly attributed to the issue raised by Mr. Beevor: “Worldview attitudes and the moral and socio-psychological qualities resulting from them were also manifested in relation to the enemy. Already in the spring of 1942, in one of the divisional newspapers of the Karelian Front, there was an essay by a Red Army soldier under the eloquent heading "We have learned to hate." And this just hatred was one of the dominant feelings in the active Soviet Army throughout the war. However, depending on its specific stage and the conditions associated with it, the attitude towards the enemy acquired various shades. So, a new, more complex range of feelings began to manifest itself in Soviet soldiers and officers in connection with the transfer of hostilities outside our country, to foreign, including enemy, territory. Many servicemen believed that as winners they could afford everything, including arbitrariness against the civilian population.

Negative phenomena in the liberating army caused tangible damage to the prestige of the Soviet Union and its armed forces, could adversely affect future relations with the countries through which our troops passed. The Soviet command had to pay attention again and again to the state of discipline in the troops, conduct explanatory conversations with personnel, adopt special directives and issue harsh orders. The Soviet Union had to show the peoples of Europe that it was not the "horde of Asians" that had entered their land, but the army of a civilized state. Therefore, purely criminal offenses in the eyes of the leadership of the USSR acquired a political coloring. In this regard, on personal instructions, several show trials were arranged with the death sentences for the guilty, and the NKVD bodies regularly informed the military command about their measures to combat the facts of robbery against the civilian population.

Well, where are the "facts of violence committed by Soviet soldiers and officers against Ukrainian, Russian and Belarusian women and girls released from German work camps"? Maybe Mr. Beevor had in mind that this is said in the work of M.I. Semiryaga, to which I refer? But there is nothing like it!

However, in the West, Mr. Beevor's statements are regarded as absolutely reliable. So, K. Eggert in the article “Memory and Truth”, written in 2005 for the BBC project on the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II, wrote: “When Anthony Beevor’s book “The Fall of Berlin” (now translated in Russia by the AST publishing house), the Russian ambassador to the UK, Grigory Karasin, wrote an angry letter to the Daily Telegraph newspaper. The diplomat accused the well-known military historian of slandering the glorious feat of Soviet soldiers. Cause? Beevor, based on documents from the main military archive in Podolsk, spoke, among other things, about the atrocities that Soviet soldiers committed in liberated Poland, East Prussia and in Berlin itself. Historians from the Russian Academy of Sciences condemned the book "The Fall of Berlin" almost before the ambassador. Meanwhile, the reference apparatus of Beevor's book is in perfect order: incoming and outgoing numbers of reports, a folder, a shelf, and so on. That is, you can’t accuse a writer of lying.”

But if such an obvious fraud is allowed in this particular example, where is the guarantee that the other so-called facts given in Mr. Beevor's book are not fabricated according to the same "method"? Many falsifications are built on this simple calculation: the reference apparatus looks solid and convincing, especially for an inexperienced reader, and it is unlikely that anyone will check each of the 1007 author's footnotes in the archive and library ...

However, some check - and find a lot of interesting things. It was with the light hand of Beevor that the “accurate statistics” were launched and subsequently replicated in thousands of publications - two million German women were raped, of which one hundred thousand were in Berlin.

The number of deaths throughout East Germany must be much higher if one takes into account the 1400,000 rapes in East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia. It appears that in total about two million German women were raped, many of whom (if not most) suffered this humiliation several times.

At the same time, he refers to the book by Helke Sander and Barbara Yohr "Liberators and the Liberated", where the calculations are made on the basis of data not from "the two main Berlin hospitals", but from one children's clinic, i.e. "to add solidity" makes a completely conscious distortion. Not to mention the fact that these data are very doubtful, since the system of calculations by Barbara Yor, based on an arbitrary extrapolation of the number of children whose fathers are named Russians, born in 1945 and 1946. and examined in a Berlin clinic, on the total number of female population of East Germany aged "from 8 to 80 years", does not stand up to scrutiny. The result of such a "generalization" of individual cases implies that "every 6th East German woman, regardless of age, was raped by the Red Army at least once."

But even where E. Beevor refers to real archival documents, this does not prove anything. The Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation does indeed store materials from political departments with reports that contain the minutes of Red Army, Komsomol and party meetings describing cases of deviant behavior of servicemen. These are chubby folders, the contents of which are solid rubbish. But they were completed precisely “thematically”, as evidenced by their very names: “Emergency incidents and immoral phenomena” for such and such a period in such and such a military unit. By the way, these names already show that such phenomena were considered by the army leadership not as a behavioral norm, but as an emergency event requiring decisive action.

Naturally, several chapters are devoted to the last months of the war from a very specific angle, as evidenced by their titles: "No mercy, no condescension." The atrocities of the Red Army during the advance on German soil”, “Woe to you, Germany!” Atrocities find their continuation. The list of literature of this kind, reviving the spirit and letter of Goebbels' propaganda in the new historical conditions, can be continued for quite some time.

Information warfare in electronic media

A real information war has unfolded in the vastness of the Russian-language Internet.

So, in May 2005, a certain Yu. Nesterenko wrote an article “Day of National Shame”, initiating the indefinite action “Anti-Victory”, within which “numerous testimonies about the monstrous crimes of the Soviet“ “warriors-liberators” (often surpassing the worst deeds in cruelty Nazis)": "... Instead of inflating another propaganda hysteria and demanding gratitude from the raped for the pleasure, we must put an end to the practice of many years of hypocritical lies and double standards, stop honoring the servants of the criminal regime and repent before all those who innocently suffered from the actions of "soldiers -liberators" - this is the main message of the organizer of the action.

In May 2009, also on the eve of Victory Day, A. Shiropaev’s provocative post “Tomb of the Unknown Rapist” appeared, exposing our veterans as pedophile rapists, which received a huge number of comments and hung in the top of Yandex for a long time.

On Wikipedia, many pages are directly or indirectly devoted to the topic of rape at the end of the war: “Violence against the civilian population of Germany (1945)”, “Deportation of Germans after World War II”, “German population in East Prussia after World War II” , "Murder in Nemmersdorf", "The Fall of Berlin. 1945" and others.

And the radio station "Echo of Moscow" (2009) in the program "The Price of Victory" twice broadcast on "painful topics" - "The Wehrmacht and the Red Army against the civilian population" (February 16) and "The Red Army on German territory" (October 26) , inviting G. Bordyugov and the infamous M. Solonin to the studio.

Finally, in 2010, the year of the 65th anniversary of the Victory, another anti-Russian wave arose that swept across Europe and was especially noticeable in Germany.

And he shares his observations with readers: “While the German chancellor was looking at the Victory Parade, a Russophobic orgy was raging in Germany. The Russians who defeated Hitler were shown as a horde of subhumans - quite according to Goebbels' patterns. For three days in a row I watched programs on German state and commercial information channels dedicated to the end of World War II in Europe and the first post-war weeks. There are a lot of programs, both documentary and artistic. The general theme is this. Americans are humanists, breadwinners... Russians are robbers and rapists. The theme of the crimes of the Wehrmacht against the civilian population of the USSR is missing. The number of dead Soviet people in the zone of German-Romanian-Finnish occupation is not given.

Having taken Berlin, the Russians feed the poor Berliners badly, bring them to dystrophy, but they drag everything in a row and rape them. And here the artistic television series “One Woman in Berlin” is characteristic. (central channel ZDF). The Russians are shown not as an army, but as a horde. Against the background of thin, pale, spiritualized German faces, these terrible Russian muzzles, gaping mouths, thick cheeks, greasy eyes, nasty smiles ... ".

Such propaganda clichés, splashed into art, emotionally affect the audience, are firmly fixed in the mass consciousness, form not only a distorted “retrospective” view of the events of the Second World War, but also the image of modern Russia and Russians.

The general leitmotif of these attacks is an attempt to replace "liberation" with "occupation", the desire to present the liberation mission of the USSR in Europe as a "new enslavement" of countries that have fallen into the sphere of Soviet influence, accusations not only against the USSR and the Soviet Army, but also against Russia as the legal successor of the Soviet Union in the imposition of totalitarian regimes in Central and Eastern Europe, in crimes against the civilian population, demands for her to "repent" and "repair the damage."

Limits of hate, limits of revenge

However, the morality of war is completely different from the morality of peacetime. And it is possible to evaluate those events only in a general historical context, without dividing, and even more so without substituting cause and effect. It is impossible to put an equal sign between the victim of aggression and the aggressor, especially one whose goal was the destruction of entire nations. Fascist Germany itself placed itself outside morality and outside the law. Should we be surprised at the acts of spontaneous revenge on the part of those whose loved ones she cold-bloodedly and methodically destroyed for several years in the most sophisticated and savage ways?

During the Great Patriotic War, the theme of retribution was one of the central ones in agitation and propaganda, as well as in the thoughts and feelings of the Soviet people. Long before the army approached the enemy border, passing through their native land tormented by the invaders, seeing tortured women and children, burned and destroyed cities and villages, Soviet soldiers vowed to take revenge on the invaders a hundredfold and often thought about the time when they would enter enemy territory. And when it happened, they were - they couldn't help but be! - psychological breakdowns, especially among those who have lost their families.

In January-February 1945, Soviet troops launched the Vistula-Oder and East Prussian offensive operations and entered German soil. “Here it is, damn Germany!” - the Russian soldier who was the first to cross the border wrote on one of the home-made shields near the burnt house. The day you've been waiting for so long has arrived. And at every step, Soviet soldiers came across things with our factory marks, stolen by the Nazis; compatriots released from captivity spoke about the horrors and abuse they experienced in German slavery. The German inhabitants, who supported Hitler and welcomed the war, shamelessly used the fruits of the robbery of other peoples, did not expect that the war would return to where it started - to the territory of Germany. And now these "civilian" Germans, frightened and fawning, with white bandages on their sleeves, were afraid to look into the eyes, expecting retribution for everything that their army had done in a foreign land.

The thirst for revenge on the enemy "in his own lair" was one of the dominant moods in the troops, especially since it was fueled for a long time and purposefully by official propaganda. On the eve of the offensive, rallies and meetings were held in combat units on the topic “How will I take revenge on the German invaders”, “My personal account of revenge on the enemy”. So, for example, in the report of the head of the political department of the Central Group of Forces, Lieutenant-General S.F. Galadzhev, it was noted: “During the preparatory period, the political agencies skillfully and widely used such a tool as the account of revenge. Only in one small part, a formidable account of revenge on the fascist bandits was created. The soldiers wrote: “We take revenge on the Nazis for 775 of our relatives killed by them; for 909 of our relatives driven to hard labor in Germany; for 478 burned houses and 303 destroyed households””.

But it is one thing to understand this obvious truth with the mind, and quite another to rise above one's grief and hatred, not to give free rein to the blind thirst for revenge. The clarifications of the political departments that followed at the beginning of 1945 about “how one should behave” on German territory came as a surprise to many and were often rejected.

The pattern of hatred towards Germany on the part of the Soviet troops entering its territory was understood at that time by the Germans themselves. Here is what the 16-year-old Dieter Borkowski wrote in his diary on April 15, 1945, about the mood of the Berlin population: “... At noon, we left the Anhalt station in a completely overcrowded city train. There were many women on the train with us - refugees from the Russian-occupied eastern districts of Berlin. They dragged with them all their belongings: a stuffed backpack. Nothing more. Horror froze on their faces, anger and despair filled people! I have never heard such swearing...

Then someone yelled, blocking the noise: “Quiet!” We saw a nondescript, dirty soldier wearing two iron crosses and a gold German cross. On his sleeve he had a patch with four small metal tanks, which meant that he had knocked out 4 tanks in close combat.

“I want to tell you something,” he shouted, and there was silence in the train car. “Even if you don't want to listen! Stop whining! We must win this war, we must not lose courage. If others win - Russians, Poles, French, Czechs - and even one percent do to our people what we did to them for six years in a row, then in a few weeks not a single German will be left alive. This is what the one who himself was in the occupied countries for six years is telling you!”. It became so quiet in the train that you could hear a hairpin fall.”

The leadership of the Soviet Army took severe measures against violence and atrocities against the German population, declaring such actions criminal and unacceptable, and bringing those responsible to trial by a military tribunal up to and including execution.

So, having entered the lands of East Prussia, on January 21, 1945, the commander of the 2nd Belorussian Front, Marshal K.K. Rokossovsky, issued order No. looting, senseless arson and destruction. The danger of such phenomena for the morale and combat effectiveness of the army was noted. On January 27, the same order was issued by the commander of the 1st Ukrainian Front, Marshal I.S. Konev. On January 29, the order of Marshal G.K. was read out in all battalions of the 1st Belorussian Front. Zhukov, who forbade the Red Army soldiers "to oppress the German population, rob apartments and burn houses." On April 20, 1945, a special directive of the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command on the behavior of Soviet troops in Germany was adopted. And although "it was not completely possible to prevent cases of violence, they managed to contain it, and then reduce it to a minimum."

Of course, the influx of feelings of revenge among our people is enormous, and this influx of feelings has led our fighters to the lair of the fascist beast and will lead further to Germany. But you can not equate revenge with drunkenness, arson. I burned down the house, and there is nowhere to put the wounded. Is this revenge? I wantonly destroy property. This is not an expression of revenge. We must explain that all property, livestock was won by the blood of our people, that we must take all this to ourselves and, through this, to some extent strengthen the economy of our state in order to become even stronger than the Germans ... Here we will need to correct the shortcomings, direct a feeling of hatred for the enemy along the right track.

A lot of work had to be done to change the attitude of the army to take revenge on Germany, which was formed by the course of the war itself and the previous political work. I had to again breed the concepts of "fascist" and "German" in the minds of people.

“The political departments are doing a lot of work among the troops, explaining how to behave with the population, distinguishing incorrigible enemies from honest people, with whom we probably still have to work a lot. Who knows, maybe they will still have to help restore everything that was destroyed by the war, - wrote in the spring of 1945 an employee of the headquarters of the 1st Guards Tank Army E.S. Katukova. - To tell the truth, many of our fighters hardly accept this line of tactful treatment of the population, especially those whose families suffered from the Nazis during the occupation. But our discipline is strict. Probably years will pass, and much will change. We will, perhaps, even visit the Germans to look at the current battlefields. But much before that should burn out and boil in the soul, everything that we experienced from the Nazis, all these horrors, is still too close.

Various kinds of "emergency events and immoral phenomena" in the units of the advancing Red Army were carefully recorded by special departments, military prosecutors, political workers, were suppressed if possible and severely punished. However, it was mainly the rear and wagonmen who were outraged. The combat units were simply not up to it - they fought. Their hatred spilled out on the enemy armed and resisting. And those who tried to stay away from the front line “fought” with women and old people.

It should be noted that many soldiers and officers themselves resolutely fought against robberies and violence. The harsh sentences of the military tribunals also contributed to their suppression. According to the military prosecutor's office, “in the first months of 1945, 4,148 officers and a large number of privates were convicted by military tribunals for committed atrocities against the local population. Several show trials of military personnel resulted in death sentences for those responsible.”

At the same time, if we turn to the documents of the German side, we will see that even before the start of the war against the USSR, it was announced in advance that “in the fight against Bolshevism, it is impossible to build relations with the enemy on the principles of humanism and international law”, thereby initially allowing any violations of international law in the future relations of the German troops to the civilian population and Soviet prisoners of war.

As one of the numerous examples of policy statements by the German leadership, let us quote the Decree of Hitler as the Supreme Commander of the Wehrmacht of May 13, 1941 on military justice in the war with the Soviet Union: “For actions against enemy civilians committed by Wehrmacht military personnel and civilians, there will be no mandatory prosecution, even if the act is a war crime or a misdemeanor... The judge orders the prosecution of acts against local residents in a military court only when it comes to non-compliance with military discipline or a threat to the security of the troops.”

With regard to the German population or prisoners of war, the Soviet leadership never set such tasks for its army. Consequently, we can speak about individual (especially in comparison with the actions of the German side) violations of international law in the conduct of war. Moreover, all these phenomena were spontaneous, not organized, and were suppressed with all severity by the Soviet army command. And yet, as the German historian Reinhard Rurup noted, in defeating Germany, “fear and horror in relation to the Soviet troops were widespread to a much greater extent than in relation to the British or Americans ... Many Germans more or less definitely knew what exactly happened in Soviet Union, and therefore they were afraid of revenge or retribution in the same coin ... ", and the publicist E. Kubi stated that "Soviet soldiers could also behave like a" punishing heavenly army ", guided only by hatred for the German population ... The German people in reality can consider himself happy - he did not suffer justice.

Speaking about the scale of rape in the zone of responsibility of the Soviet troops, one should cite an excerpt from the report of the military prosecutor of the 1st Belorussian Front on the implementation of the directive of the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command No. 11072 and the Military Council of the 1st Belorussian Front No. 00384 on the change in attitude towards the German population as of May 5 1945: “Fulfilling the instructions of the Military Council of the Front, the Military Prosecutor's Office of the Front systematically monitors the implementation of the directives of the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command and the Military Council of the Front on changing attitudes towards the German population. We have to admit that the facts of robberies, violence and other illegal actions by our military personnel against the local German population not only did not stop, but even from April 22 to May 5 continued to be quite widespread.

I give figures characterizing this situation in 7 armies of our front: the total number of atrocities by military personnel against the local population recorded in these 7 armies is 124, of which: rape of German women - 72, robberies - 38, murders - 3, others illegal actions - 11”. We emphasize that these are data on 7 armies of the front storming Berlin, in the midst of urban battles, that is, 908.5 thousand personnel at the beginning of the Berlin operation, of which 37.6 thousand were irrevocable and 141.9 thousand were killed. sanitary losses - and only 72 cases of rape in two weeks! Considering that in the future the number of rapes and "other outrages", according to the materials of the military prosecutor's office and the tribunals, began to decrease, the figure of 100 thousand Berliners who were subjected to "abuse by Soviet barbarians", to put it mildly, does not dance. Not to mention two million...

At the same time, according to Osmar White, the actions of the Soviet administration to improve the life of the German civilian population (immediately after the end of the fighting!) were much more effective than those of its Western counterparts. “At the end of the first day of my stay in Berlin,” he wrote in his diary, “I was sure that the city was dead. Human beings could not live in this horrendous pile of rubbish.

By the end of the first week, my perceptions began to change. Society began to revive among the ruins. Berliners began to receive food and water in quantities sufficient to survive. More and more people were employed in public works carried out under the direction of the Russians.

Thanks to the Russians, who have extensive experience in dealing with such problems in their own devastated cities, the spread of epidemics was brought under control.

I am convinced that the Soviets in those days did more to keep Berlin alive than the Anglo-Americans could have done in their place.

Russian methods of maintaining order and achieving results in the most essential did not have such a deterrent as good-heartedness. They understood the psychology of the masses and knew that the sooner Berliners were inspired to help themselves, the better it would be for everyone. A few days after the surrender, they supported the idea of publishing newspapers. Then they restored radio broadcasting, allowed the organization of entertainment events and announced that they would approve the creation of trade unions and democratic political parties ... ".

He goes on to write, focusing on the reactions of the Germans themselves: “Radio, newspapers, politics, concerts... The Russians wisely fueled the rebirth in the desert of despair. They showed generosity to the followers of the monster, who lay in his lair under the mountains of rubble. But the Berliners did not look at the world the way the Russians would have liked. Whispering was heard everywhere: “Thank God that you - the British and Americans - have come here. Russians are animals, they took away everything that was from me ... they rape, steal and shoot ... "".

Women of liberated Europe through the eyes of Soviet soldiers and officers

In the course of moving to the West and the inevitable various contacts with the local population, Soviet military personnel, who had never been outside their own country before, received many new, very contradictory impressions about representatives of other peoples and cultures, from which ethnopsychological stereotypes of their perception of Europeans were further formed. Among these impressions, the most important place was occupied by the image of European women. Mentions, and detailed stories they are found in letters and diaries, on the pages of memoirs of many participants in the war, where lyrical and cynical assessments and intonations most often alternate.

The first European country, which the Red Army entered in August 1944, was Romania. In the “Notes on the War” of the front-line poet Boris Slutsky, we find very frank lines: “Sudden, almost pushed into the sea, Constanta opens. It almost coincides with the average dream of happiness and "after the war." Restaurants. Bathrooms. Beds with clean linen. Shops with reptile sellers. And - women, smart city women - girls of Europe - the first tribute we took from the vanquished ... "He then describes his first impressions of" abroad ":" European hairdressers, where they wash their fingers and do not wash brushes, the absence of a bath, washing from a basin, “where at first the dirt from the hands remains, and then the face is washed”, feather beds instead of blankets - out of disgust caused by everyday life, immediate generalizations were made ... In Constanta we first met with brothels ... Our first delights before the fact of the existence of free love quickly pass. It affects not only the fear of infection and high cost, but also contempt for the very possibility of buying a person ... Many were proud of past stories like: a Romanian husband complains to the commandant's office that our officer did not pay his wife the agreed one and a half thousand lei. Everyone had a clear consciousness: “It’s impossible for us” ... Probably, our soldiers will remember Romania as a country of syphilitics ...”. And he concludes that it was in Romania, this European outback, that "our soldier most of all felt his elevation above Europe."

Another Soviet officer, Lieutenant Colonel of the Air Force Fedor Smolnikov, on September 17, 1944, wrote down his impressions of Bucharest in his diary: “Ambassador Hotel, restaurant, ground floor. I see how the idle public walks, she has nothing to do, she waits. They look at me like a rarity. "Russian officer!!!" I am very modestly dressed, more than modestly. Let be. We will still be in Budapest. This is as true as the fact that I am in Bucharest. First class restaurant. The audience is dressed up, the most beautiful Romanian women look defiantly. We spend the night in a first-class hotel. The metropolitan street is seething. There is no music, the audience is waiting. Capital, damn it! I will not give in to advertising ... "

In Hungary, the Soviet army faced not only armed resistance, but also insidious blows in the back from the population, when they “killed drunken and stragglers in farms” and drowned in silos. However, “women, not as depraved as the Romanians, yielded with shameful ease ... A little love, a little debauchery, and most of all, of course, fear helped.” Quoting the words of one Hungarian lawyer, “It is very good that Russians love children so much. It’s too bad that they love women so much,” Boris Slutsky comments: “He did not take into account that Hungarian women also loved Russians, that along with the dark fear that pushed apart the knees of matrons and mothers of families, there were the tenderness of the girls and the desperate tenderness of the soldiers who gave themselves to the killers their husbands." For the fighters brought up in patriarchal Russian traditions, the culture shock turned out to be local customs, according to which “a girl, before entering into marriage, with the approval of her parents, can experience intimacy with many men.” “We are told: they don’t buy a cat in a tied bag,” the Hungarians themselves confided.

Young, physically healthy men had a natural attraction to women. But the ease of European morals corrupted some of the Soviet fighters, while others, on the contrary, convinced that relations should not be reduced to simple physiology. Sergeant Alexander Rodin wrote down his impressions of the visit - out of curiosity! - a brothel in Budapest, where part of it stood for some time after the end of the war: “... After leaving, a disgusting, shameful feeling of lies and falsehood arose, a picture of a woman’s obvious, frank pretense did not go out of her head ... It is interesting that such an unpleasant aftertaste from visiting a brothel was not only with me, a youngster, who was also brought up on principles like “do not give a kiss without love, but also with most of our soldiers with whom I had to talk ... Around the same days I had to talk with one a beautiful Magyar woman (she knew Russian from somewhere). To her question, did I like it in Budapest, I answered that I liked it, only brothels are embarrassing. "But why?" - asked the girl. Because it is unnatural, wild, - I explained: - a woman takes money and after that, immediately begins to “love!” The girl thought for a while, then nodded in agreement and said: “You are right: take the money forward ugly…”

Poland left other impressions about itself. According to the testimony of the poet David Samoilov, “...in Poland they kept us strict. It was difficult to get out of the location. And pranks were severely punished. And he gives impressions of this country, where the only positive moment was the beauty of Polish women. “I cannot say that we liked Poland very much,” he wrote. - Then in it I did not meet anything gentry and knightly. On the contrary, everything was petty-bourgeois, farmer-both concepts and interests. Yes, and they looked at us in eastern Poland warily and semi-hostilely, trying to rip off everything possible from the liberators. However, the women were consolingly beautiful and coquettish, they captivated us with their manner, cooing speech, where everything suddenly became clear, and they themselves were captivated by sometimes rude masculine strength or a soldier's uniform. And the pale, emaciated former admirers of them, gritting their teeth, for the time being went into the shadows ... ".

Another front-line soldier, Alexander Rodin, recalled: “The vitality of the Poles, who survived the horrors of the war and the German occupation, was striking. Sunday in the Polish village. Beautiful, elegant, in silk dresses and stockings, Polish women, who on weekdays are ordinary peasant women, rake manure, barefoot, tirelessly work around the house. Older women also look fresh and young. Although there are black frames around the eyes ... "He further quotes his diary entry of November 5, 1944:" Sunday, the inhabitants are all dressed up. They gather to visit each other. Men in felt hats, ties, jumpers. Women in silk dresses, bright, unworn stockings. Rosy-cheeked girls are "panenki". Beautifully curled blond hairstyles... The soldiers in the corner of the hut are also animated. But whoever is sensitive will notice that this is a painful revival. Everyone is laughing loudly to show that they don’t care, they don’t even hurt at all and are not envious at all. What are we, worse than them? The devil knows what happiness it is - a peaceful life! After all, I didn’t see her at all in civilian life! His brother-soldier Sergeant Nikolai Nesterov wrote in his diary on the same day: “Today is a day off, the Poles, beautifully dressed, gather in one hut and sit in pairs. Even somehow it becomes uncomfortable. Wouldn't I be able to sit like this? .. "

In Austria, where Soviet troops broke into in the spring of 1945, they were faced with "general surrender": "Whole villages were headed by white rags. Elderly women raised their hands up when they met a man in a Red Army uniform. It was here, according to B. Slutsky, that the soldiers "fell on the blond women." At the same time, “Austrian women did not turn out to be overly stubborn”: most village girls led an intimate life before marriage, and city dwellers were traditionally distinguished by frivolity and, as the Austrians themselves claimed, “chivalry is enough to get everything you want from a wreath.”

And finally Germany. And the women of the enemy - mothers, wives, daughters, sisters of those who from 1941 to 1944 mocked the civilian population in the occupied territory of the USSR. How did the Soviet military see them? Appearance German women walking in a crowd of refugees is described in the diary of Vladimir Bogomolov: “Women - old and young - in hats, shawls with a turban and just a canopy, like our women, in smart coats with fur collars and in shabby, incomprehensible cut clothes. Many women go in dark glasses so as not to squint from the bright May sun and thereby protect their faces from wrinkles ... "

How did the Germans behave when meeting with Soviet troops? In the report of the Deputy Chief of the Main Political Directorate of the Red Army Shikin in the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks G.F. Aleksandrov dated April 30, 1945 on the attitude of the civilian population of Berlin to the personnel of the Red Army troops said: “As soon as our units occupy one or another area of the city, residents gradually begin to take to the streets, almost all of them have white armbands on their sleeves. When meeting with our servicemen, many women raise their hands up, cry and tremble with fear, but as soon as they are convinced that the soldiers and officers of the Red Army are not at all the same as they were painted by their fascist propaganda, this fear quickly disappears, more and more population takes to the streets and offers their services, trying in every possible way to emphasize their loyal attitude to the Red Army.

The greatest impression on the winners was made by the humility and prudence of the German women. In this regard, it is worth citing the story of the mortar man N.A. Orlov: “We went to some German city, settled in the houses. A “frau”, about 45 years old, appears and asks for “hera commandant” ... She declares that she is responsible for the quarter, and has gathered 20 German women for the sexual (!!!) service of Russian soldiers ... The reaction of our officers was angry and obscene. The German woman was driven away, along with her "detachment" ready for service. In general, German obedience stunned us. They expected guerrilla warfare and sabotage from the Germans. But for this nation, order - "Ordnung" - is above all. If you are a winner, then they are “on their hind legs”, moreover, consciously and not under duress. That's the kind of psychology...

David Samoilov cites a similar case in his military notes: “In Arendsfeld, where we had just settled down, a small crowd of women with children appeared. They were led by a huge mustachioed German woman of about fifty - Frau Friedrich. She stated that she was a representative of the civilian population and requested that the remaining residents be registered. We replied that this could be done as soon as the commandant's office appeared.

It's impossible, said Frau Friedrich. - There are women and children. They need to be registered.

The civilian population with a cry and tears confirmed her words.

Not knowing what to do, I suggested that they take the basement of the house where we were located. And they calmed down went down to the basement and began to be accommodated there, waiting for the authorities.

Herr Commissar,” Frau Friedrich told me benevolently (I wore a leather jacket). We understand that soldiers have small needs. They are ready, - continued Frau Friedrich, - to provide them with several younger women for ...

I did not continue the conversation with Frau Friedrich. .

After talking with the residents of Berlin on May 2, 1945, Vladimir Bogomolov wrote in his diary: “We are entering one of the surviving houses. Everything is quiet, dead. We knock, please open. You can hear whispering in the corridor, muffled and excited conversations. Finally the door opens. Women without age, huddled together in a close group, bow frightened, low and obsequiously. German women are afraid of us, they were told that Soviet soldiers, especially Asians, would rape and kill them... Fear and hatred on their faces. But sometimes it seems that they like to be defeated - their behavior is so helpful, their smiles are so touching and their words are sweet. These days, there are stories about how our soldier went into a German apartment, asked for a drink, and the German woman, as soon as she saw him, lay down on the sofa and took off her tights.

“All German women are depraved. They have nothing against sleeping with them, ”such an opinion was common in the Soviet troops and was supported not only by many illustrative examples, but also by their unpleasant consequences, which were soon discovered by military doctors.

Directive of the Military Council of the 1st Belorussian Front No. 00343/Sh dated April 15, 1945 read: “During the stay of troops on enemy territory, cases of venereal diseases among military personnel have sharply increased. A study of the reasons for this situation shows that venereal diseases are widespread among Germans. Before the retreat, and also now, in the territory we occupied, the Germans took the path of artificially infecting German women with syphilis and gonorrhea in order to create large foci for the spread of venereal diseases among the Red Army soldiers.

On April 26, 1945, the Military Council of the 47th Army reported that “... In March, the number of venereal diseases among military personnel increased compared to February of this year. four times. ... The female part of the German population in the surveyed areas is affected by 8-15%. There are cases when German women with venereal diseases are deliberately left by the enemy to infect military personnel.

The general impression of European women that Soviet servicemen have is that they are sleek and well-dressed (in comparison with compatriots exhausted by the war in the half-starved rear, on lands liberated from occupation, and even with front-line girlfriends dressed in washed-out tunics), accessible, self-serving, dissolute or cowardly submissive. The exceptions were Yugoslav and Bulgarian women. Severe and ascetic Yugoslav partisans were perceived as comrades in arms and were considered inviolable. And given the severity of morals in the Yugoslav army, "partisan girls probably looked at the PPZh [camping field wives] as creatures of a special, nasty sort." Boris Slutsky recalled the Bulgarians as follows: “... After the Ukrainian complacency, after the Romanian debauchery, the severe inaccessibility of Bulgarian women struck our people. Almost no one boasted of victories ... Later, the Bulgarians were proud when they were told that the Russians were going to return to Bulgaria for brides - the only ones in the world who remained clean and untouched. A pleasant impression was left by the Czech beauties, who joyfully met the Soviet soldiers-liberators: their friendliness and cordiality was quite sincere.

But in other countries through which the victorious army passed, the female part of the population did not command respect. “In Europe, women gave up, changed before anyone else ... - wrote B. Slutsky. - I was always shocked, confused, disoriented by the lightness, the shameful lightness of love relationships. Decent women, of course, disinterested, were like prostitutes - in hasty accessibility, the desire to avoid intermediate stages, disinterest in the motives that push a man to get closer to them ... ".

In general, it should be recognized that the image of European women, formed by the soldiers of the Red Army in 1944-1945, with rare exceptions, turned out to be very far from the suffering figure with chained hands, looking with hope from the Soviet poster "Europe will be free!" .

Allied Behavior: "Women as Prey"

In the West, the thesis about the "outrages" of the Red Army in the territory of Germany occupied by it is constantly exaggerated. Meanwhile, the documents show that in the western zones of occupation there was by no means that idyll, the image of which is inspired today in the German, and indeed in the entire Western consciousness. Eisenhower's radio message "We come victorious!" quite clearly meant both "the right of the victors" and "woe to the vanquished."

In the report of the 7th branch of the Political Department of the 61st Army of the 1st Belorussian Front dated May 11, 1945 “On the work american army and military authorities among the German population" reported: "American soldiers and officers are prohibited from communicating with the local population. This prohibition, however, is violated. Recently, there have been up to 100 cases of rape, although for rape you get execution.”

The Negro units were especially distinguished.

At the end of April 1945, the German Communist Hans Yendretsky, released from prison by the Western Allies, reported on the situation in the zone of Germany occupied by American troops: “Most of the occupying troops in the Erlangen region up to Bamberg and in Bamberg itself were Negro units. These negro units were located mainly in those places where there was a lot of resistance. I was told about such atrocities of these Negroes as robbing apartments, taking away objects of decoration, ruining residential premises and attacks on children.

In Bamberg, in front of the school building where these Negroes were stationed, lay three executed Negroes who had been shot by a military police patrol a few years ago for attacking children. But also the white regular American troops carried out such atrocities ... ". O.A. Rzheshevsky cites data according to which in the US Army, where the number of rapes increased sharply after entering Germany, 69 people were executed for this crime and for murders.

Interesting evidence was left by the Australian war correspondent Osmar White, who in 1944-1945. was in Europe in the ranks of the 3rd American Army under the command of George Paton. His diaries and newspaper articles formed the basis of the book Conquerors' Road: An Eyewitness Account of Germany 1945, which provides many unflattering descriptions of the behavior of American soldiers in defeated Germany. The book was written back in 1945 BC, but then the publishers refused to publish it because of its criticism of the Allied occupation policy.It was published only at the end of the 20th century.

In it, O. White, in particular, wrote: “After fighting moved to German soil, a lot of rapes were committed by the soldiers of the front-line units and those who followed directly behind them. Their number depended on the attitude of senior officers to this. In some cases, the perpetrators were identified, prosecuted and punished. Lawyers were secretive, but admitted that for cruel and perverted sexual acts with German women, some soldiers were shot (especially in cases where they were Negroes). However, I knew that many women were also raped by white Americans. No action was taken against the criminals" .

“On one sector of the front, one rather well-deserved commander wittily remarked: “Copulation without conversation is not fraternization!” Another officer once dryly remarked about the order against "fraternization": "Definitely, this is the first time in history that a serious effort is being made to deprive soldiers of the right to women in a defeated country."

Probably the most credible characterization of the situation was given by an intelligent middle-aged Austrian from Bad Homburg: “Of course, the soldiers take women ... After the occupation of this city, soldiers woke us for many nights, knocking on the door and demanding Fraulen. Sometimes they broke into the house by force. Sometimes the women managed to hide or run away.” I asked her if she knew the women who had actually been raped.

She thought for a moment and replied, “No, I don't think it happened often. You must remember that now, unlike in the days when Nazi ideas were not yet widespread, German women are not horrified by the thought that a man can use violence against them. They are afraid, it's true. But they are more afraid of being beaten than of being raped. You will see for yourself. If your soldiers are patient enough, they will see that German women are quite submissive."

The "no-fraternization rule" proclaimed immediately after the entry of the Americans into German territory never took effect. It was absurdly artificial, and it was simply impossible to put it into action. It was originally aimed at preventing British and American soldiers from cohabiting with German women. But as soon as the fighting ended and the troops were deployed to their places of permanent deployment, a significant number of officers and soldiers, especially from the military administration, began to establish relationships with German women of all categories - from going to prostitutes to normal and noble novels ...

After several miserable and senseless military trials of scapegoats, the "ban on fraternization" turned into an empty phrase. As far as I know, the soldiers from the American division that liberated Buchenwald in April were already sleeping with the Germans by the end of May. They boasted about it. When the camp was cleared and turned into a center for displaced persons, the rows of barracks in which hundreds of Eastern Europeans died of starvation and disease were furnished with looted Weimar furniture and turned into a brothel. He prospered and supplied the camp with countless canned goods and cigarettes.

And here is the testimony of one of the German women about the behavior of the French: “When the war ended in May 1945, the“ liberators ”appeared - these were young French officers - then there was immediately no trace of the joyful feeling of the end of the war. Many women were attacked and raped. This is how the world began!

Austin Epp's pamphlet Rape of the Women of Conquered Europe, published in the USA in 1946, contains several reports from the American and English press:

"John Dos Passos, in Life magazine, January 7, 1946, quotes a 'red-cheeked major' as stating that 'lust, whiskey and robbery are the soldier's reward'." One soldier wrote in Time magazine on November 12, 1945: "Many normal American families would be horrified if they knew with what utter insensibility to all human things" our guys "behaved here ... "

The American military signalman Edward Wise wrote in his diary: “We moved to Oberhunden. The colored guys have arranged a hell of a thing here. They set fire to the houses, cut all the Germans in a row with razors and raped them.”

An army sergeant wrote: “Both our army and the British army ... have contributed their share in robbery and rape ... Although these crimes are not characteristic of our troops, their percentage is large enough to give our army a sinister reputation, so we, too, can be considered an army of rapists.”

The daily ration of the Germans, established by the Western occupation authorities, was lower than the American breakfast. Therefore, the entry characterizing military prostitution does not look random:

On December 5, 1945, Christian Century reported: “The US military police chief, Lieutenant Colonel Gerald F. Bean, said that rape is not a problem for the military police because a little food, a bar of chocolate, or a bar of soap makes rape redundant. Think about it if you want to understand the situation in Germany."

According to Time magazine on September 17, 1945, the government supplied the soldiers with approximately 50 million condoms per month, with pictorial illustrations of their use. In fact, the soldiers were told: "Teach these Germans a lesson - and have a good time!" ...

Dr. H. Stewart, in a medical report presented to General Eisenhower, reported that during the first six months of the American occupation, the rate of venereal diseases had increased twenty times over the rate that was previously in Germany.

The "paradise life" in the western zone of occupation turned out to be such that even the refugees, frightened by propaganda about Russian atrocities, gradually returned to the areas occupied by Soviet troops. So, in the report of I. Serov to L. Beria dated June 4, 1945, on the work carried out for the month of May to provide for the population of Berlin, it was said: American troops, in connection with which they are returning to our territory. In addition, the German population, living in the territory of the Allies, is already experiencing hunger in the food supply. Further, I. Serov reports that within a month from the moment the Soviet troops occupied Berlin, about 800 thousand people returned to the city, who fled with the retreating German units, as a result of which the number of its inhabitants increased to 3 million 100 thousand people, and that “The supply of bread to the population is carried out regularly, according to established norms, and there have been no interruptions during this time.”

It is no coincidence that the first burgomaster of Bonnack (Lichtenberg district) said, commenting on the food standards introduced by the Russian command for the inhabitants of Berlin: “Everyone says that such high standards amazed us. Especially high standards for bread. Everyone understands that we cannot claim such food as was established by the Russian command, therefore, with the advent of the Red Army, we were waiting for starvation and the sending of the survivors to Siberia. After all, this is truly generosity when we are convinced in practice that the norms established now are higher than even under Hitler ...

The population fears only one thing - whether these areas will pass to the Americans and the British. This will be extremely annoying. Nothing good can be expected from the Americans and the British.”

A resident of the city of Hoffmann, in a conversation with neighbors, spoke as follows: “From the stories of the Germans arriving in Berlin from the territory occupied by the Allies, it is known that they treat the Germans very badly and beat women with whips. The Russians are better, they treat the Germans well and provide food. I want only Russians in Berlin.” The German Eda, who returned to Berlin, spoke about the same thing based on her own experience in the circle of neighbors: “In the territory occupied by the Allies, life is very difficult for the Germans, since the attitude is bad - they often beat with sticks and whips. Civilians are allowed to walk only at set times. No food is given. A lot of Germans are trying to cross into the territory occupied by the Red Army, but they are not allowed. It would be very good if only Russians were in Berlin.”

trophy hunting

Western allies not only raped women and kept the population on starvation rations, but also engaged in robbery, looting, and trophy hunting. Evidence of their behavior in Germany is found in many German memoirs.

For example, Chief Corporal Kopiske recalled: “We went to the village of Mecklenburg ... There I saw the first“ Tommy ”- three guys with a light machine gun, apparently a machine-gun squad. They lounged lazily on a pile of hay and didn't even show interest in me. The gun was on the ground. Everywhere, crowds of people were marching west, some even in wagons, but the British clearly didn't care. One was playing the song "Lily Marlene" on the harmonica. It was only the vanguard. Either they simply no longer took us into account, or they had some kind of their own, special idea of \u200b\u200bwaging war.

A little further, at the railway crossing in front of the village itself, we were met by a "post for the collection of weapons and watches." I thought I was dreaming: civilized, prosperous British take away watches from German soldiers overgrown with mud! From there we were sent to the schoolyard in the center of the village. A lot of German soldiers had already gathered there. The British guarding us rolled chewing gum between their teeth - which was a novelty for us - and boasted to each other about their trophies, throwing up their hands high, humiliated by wristwatches.

Our memoirists also remember about captured watches from the allies.

Here is what N.N. Nikulin observed at the end of May 1945 in defeated Berlin: “A huge flea market appeared at the Brandenburg Gate, where any currency was sold and you could buy everything: a suit, a gun, grub, a woman, a car. I saw how an American colonel was selling watches right from the jeep, hanging them on outstretched fingers ... ""

The American “trophy hunt” is also reflected in the memoirs of Osmar White: “Victory meant the right to trophies. The victors took everything they liked from the enemy: booze, cigars, cameras, binoculars, pistols, hunting rifles, decorative swords and daggers, silver jewelry, dishes, furs. This type of robbery was called "liberation" or "taking souvenirs." The military police paid no attention to this until predatory liberators (usually auxiliaries and transport workers) began to steal expensive cars, antique furniture, radios, tools and other industrial equipment and come up with cunning methods of smuggling stolen goods to the coast in order to to then ship it to England. Only after the fighting ended, when the robbery turned into an organized criminal racket, did the military command intervene and establish law and order. Before that, the soldiers took what they wanted, and the Germans had a hard time.”

For comparison, we present evidence from the Soviet side.

On February 19, 1945, while on the border with Germany, servicewoman M. Annenkova wrote to her friend: “Verochka, if I stay alive, then when I go to you, I will try to bring a gift from some Gretchen. They say that they have already fought, the Germans leave everything ... "

“Fritz is running, leaving everything of his own,” V. Gerasimova wrote to her relatives on February 20, 1945 from the active army. - I involuntarily recall the 41st year. Everything is left in the apartments - chic furnishings, dishes and things. Our soldiers now have the right to send packages, and they are not lost. I already wrote that we were in the manor houses where the German barons lived. They fled, leaving their entire household behind. And we eat and get better at their expense. We have no shortage of pork, or food, or sugar. We have already eaten and we do not want to eat everything. Now Germany will be in front of us, and now sometimes there are columns of Fritz, as if nailed to something, with knapsacks over their shoulders. Let them understand for themselves how good it is. Sometimes there are also our people returning to their homeland. You can immediately recognize them. And then you involuntarily compare the 41st year with the 45th and think that this 45th should be the final one.

On February 24, 1945, G. Yartseva wrote from the front: “... if there was an opportunity, it would be possible to send wonderful parcels of their trophy items. There is something. This would be our undressed and undressed. What cities I saw, what men and women. And looking at them, such evil, such hatred takes possession of you! They walk, love, live, and you go and free them. They laugh at the Russians - "Schwein!" Yes Yes! Bastards... I don't like anyone except the USSR, except for those peoples who live with us. I do not believe in any friendship with the Poles and other Lithuanians ... "

One can understand the feelings of those who sent home, to the destroyed native village, a package allowed by the command from the collected trophies. However, in the overwhelming majority of cases, it was not about valuables seized from the population, but about abandoned and ownerless things. So, foreman V.V. Syrlitsin, in letters to his wife in June 1945, explained the origin of the things sent to her in parcels: “All this was acquired in a completely honest way and do not imagine that robbery and robbery are going on in Germany. Full order. During the offensive, they confiscated what was thrown by the “aces” of Berlin and distributed it in a comradely way to anyone who liked it ... ”In another letter, he emphasized:“ We are not like the Fritz who were in Krasnodar here - no one robs or takes anything from the population, but these are our legitimate trophies taken either in the capital's Berlin store and warehouse or found gutted suitcases of those who gave the "chirp" from Berlin.

And here is the story of the mortarman N.A. Orlov: “... Regarding the trophies. There was no brazen robbery before my eyes. If someone took something, it was only in abandoned houses and shops. The "all-seeing eye" of the special forces in Germany did not doze off. For looting, they were sometimes shot... When they were allowed to send parcels home, there were weight restrictions, if I'm not mistaken, an officer could send a parcel up to 8 kg in weight, a soldier - up to three kilograms. I sent a parcel to my mother with cuts of fabric and she safely reached the addressee ... But I didn’t see someone carrying gold rings in a pouch ... ”.

It is impossible to deny the facts of the "trophy-mailing fever" in the Soviet troops at the final stage of the war and immediately after its end (the political agencies called this phenomenon "junk"), however, unlike the Western allies, everyone tried to "cash in" and "get rich" at the same time. but a few, mostly "rear and wagonmen". Disparaging remarks about things - a trifle, rags, rubbish, junk - were very common in letters and diaries. “The pettiness of everyday life was involuntarily rejected by those who daily experienced mortal danger.” Most Soviet military personnel simply tried to support their families in the rear, sending the little things necessary in everyday life to the devastated cities and villages in order to somehow compensate for the losses incurred in connection with the war or to enable loved ones to exchange what was sent for food.

At the same time, one should note the special problem of Soviet people's perception of foreign countries, the pre-war ideas about which were very different from what they saw in reality. Years of inspired ideological stereotypes came into conflict with real life experience. No wonder the political departments were so worried about the “new moods” when in letters home the soldiers described the life and life of the German population “in pink colors”, comparing what they saw with how they themselves lived before the war, and drawing “politically incorrect conclusions” from this.

Even houses that were poor by European standards seemed to them prosperous, causing, on the one hand, envy and admiration, and on the other, embittering them with their, according to their concepts, luxury.

So, in the documents of that period, broken clocks, pianos, mirrors are often mentioned.

“We are advancing, one might say, we are making a triumphal procession through East Prussia,” Yu.P. Sharapov dated February 9, 1945 from near Koenigsberg, military doctor N. N. Reshetnikova. - Nothing to do with our forest offensive [in Karelia]. We are moving along the beautiful highways. Everywhere and everywhere broken equipment, broken vans with various bright rags are lying around. Cows, pigs, horses, birds roam. The corpses of the dead are mixed with crowds of refugees - Latvians, Poles, French, Russians, Germans, who move from the front to the east on horseback, on foot, on bicycles, baby carriages, and on whatever they ride. The sight of this motley, dirty and rumpled crowd is terrible, especially in the evening, when they are looking for lodging for the night, and all the houses and buildings are occupied by troops. And there are so many troops here that even we do not always find ourselves at home. For example, they are now camped in the forest in tents ...

They lived here culturally and richly, but the standard is striking everywhere and everywhere. And after that, the surrounding luxury seems insignificant, and when you freeze, you break and beat beautiful mahogany or walnut furniture for firewood without regret. If only you knew how much valuables are being destroyed by the Ivans, how many of the most beautiful, comfortable houses have been burned. And at the same time, the soldiers are right. He can’t take everything with him to the next world or this one, but by breaking a mirror to the entire wall, it somehow becomes easier for him - a kind of distraction, a discharge of the general tension of the body and consciousness.

This widespread phenomenon - the senseless destruction of luxury and household items on enemy soil, noted by a military physician, served not only for psychological relaxation. Both with their destruction and individual acts of violence directed at the civilian population of Germany, people splashed out a sense of revenge for the death of family and friends, for their destroyed home, for their broken lives. It is not difficult to understand the feelings of a soldier who destroyed household items, who gave vent to his bitterness.

At the same time, the "spirit of destruction" was not a distinctive feature of the Soviet troops. So, O. White noted: “I have seen many cases of deliberate and malicious cruelty. The soldiers believed that they were just restoring justice and bringing morally justified retribution to the race that had oppressed Western Europe for five years. The obedience of the Germans had no effect on the behavior of the winners, but, on the contrary, aroused anger and contempt. I happened to see how American soldiers deliberately and systematically destroyed a German house in Erfurt ... "

Milk for German children

Of course, the documents that have come down to us cannot cover all the diversity of views, thoughts and feelings that arose among the Soviet people when they crossed the state border of the USSR and moved west. But even in them new political moods are clearly visible, and the attitude of the Soviet leadership towards them, and the problems of a disciplinary nature that arise before any army fighting on foreign territory, and a number of moral and psychological problems that Soviet soldiers had to face in the victorious 1945

For the vast majority of Soviet soldiers at this stage of the war, it was characteristic to overcome natural vindictive feelings and the ability to treat the resisting enemy and the defeated enemy differently, especially the civilian population. The predominance of hatred, "noble rage", a just thirst for revenge on the treacherously attacked, cruel and strong enemy in the initial stages of the war was replaced by the generosity of the winners at the final stage and after it ended.

“We crossed the border - the Motherland was liberated,” recalled the medical instructor Sofya Kuntsevich. - I thought that when we enter Germany, I will have no mercy for anyone. How much hatred accumulated in the chest!

Why should I feel sorry for his child if he killed mine? Why should I feel sorry for his mother if he hanged mine? Why should I not touch his house if he burned down mine? Why?

I wanted to see their wives, mothers who gave birth to such sons. How will they look us in the eyes?.. I remembered everything, and I think: what will happen to me? With our soldiers? We all remember...

They came to some village, the children run around - hungry, unhappy. And I, who swore that I hate them all, I will collect from my guys everything that they have, what is left of the ration, any piece of sugar, and give it to German children. Of course, I didn’t forget, I remembered everything, but I couldn’t look calmly into the hungry children’s eyes.

Hungry German children were fed by many of our soldiers. And the Soviet military administration, in matters of providing the German population with food, took special care of children. It is no coincidence that on May 31, 1945, the Military Council of the 1st Belorussian Front adopted a resolution on the supply of milk in Berlin to children under 8 years of age.

Here is how the Krasnaya Zvezda correspondent Pavel Troyanovsky described the everyday day of Marshal G.K. Zhukov in Berlin in May 1945: .

For children, milk must be sought ...

The general looked at the marshal and after a short pause said:

Comrade Marshal, they write to me from home that they are starving...

They also write to me that it is tight in the Union ... But this does not change things. The directive is very clear: to allocate so much food for the German population of Berlin.

Will we feed the Nazis?

We will feed the Germans - old men, old women, children, workers ... "

The humanity of the Soviet troops in relation to the German population, after everything that the Nazi troops had done in the territory they occupied, was surprising even for the Germans themselves. There is a lot of evidence for this.

Here is one of them, recorded in a report dated May 15, 1945, a member of the Military Council of the 5th Shock Army, Lieutenant General F.E. Bokov to a member of the Military Council of the 1st Belorussian Front, Lieutenant General K.F. Telegin about the political moods of the inhabitants of Berlin in connection with the activities carried out by the Soviet command: “Housewife Elizaveta Shtaim said: “I have three children. I don't have a husband. I assumed that we would all have to die of starvation. The Nazis said that the Bolsheviks shot all the families in which someone participated in the war against Russia.

I decided to open the veins of my children and commit suicide. But I felt sorry for the children, I hid in the basement, where we sat hungry for several days. Unexpectedly, four Red Army soldiers entered. They did not touch us, and they even gave little Werner a piece of bread and a pack of cookies. I didn't believe my eyes. After that we decided to go outside.

There were many civilians on the street. Nobody touched them. They all hurried about their business. At first I was afraid of every military man, but now I am convinced that Hitler and Goebbels are liars. It became clear to me that we were deceived. This is proved by the fact that the Russians not only do not destroy or exterminate the population, but even worry that this population does not die of hunger. Moreover, he issues high standards and worries about the restoration of our homes.

I talked to all the tenants of our house. All of them are very pleased with the attitude of the Russian command towards us. For joy, we started the gramophone and danced the whole evening. Some expressed only such an idea - is it really going to continue like this, is it really going to continue to supply. If so, then there is only one thing left - to get a job and restore the destroyed ... "

When, by 5 p.m. on May 13, Berliners learned about the new dietary standards and the procedure for obtaining food, the crowd expressed their feelings of gratitude with joyful applause.

“The general mood of the Berliners is joyful and expectant,” said F.E. Bokov in another report, also dated May 15. - Nobody expected that Soviet government will show such concern for the population. Moreover, no one hoped and could not dream of such nutritional standards. During transmissions through sound broadcasting installations, such exclamations were observed: “Thank God”, “My God! Children get sugar and butter”, “Russians will give natural coffee. I wonder where they'll take it."

After reading a leaflet about the new dietary standards, a senior Catholic minister, Dr. Pange, said: “Oh, this is wonderful! Germany did not know such norms even in the first year of the war.

The Report of the Head of the Political Directorate of the 1st Belorussian Front to the Head of the 7th Directorate of the Main Political Directorate of the Red Army on work with the German population during the preparation and conduct of the Berlin operation No. 0464 dated May 19, 1945 said: helps in everything where it is needed, and wants to get a job as soon as possible ... Our measures to supply food, improve the life of the city, stunned the Germans. They are surprised by the generosity, the rapid restoration of order in the city, the discipline of the troops ... The hostile activity of the Nazi elements is isolated and does not meet with the support of the bulk of the population. On the contrary, the population is actively beginning to help catch them.”

In this regard, it should be noted the interesting reaction of the population of one of the districts of Berlin in connection with the spread of rumors about the cessation of the distribution of food. I. Serov on June 4, 1945 reported to L. Beria: “On May 28, in the Prenzlaunsberg area, a shot was fired at a Red Army commandant on duty from one house. Some of the inhabitants of this house were thrown into the place by an outfit, and a rumor was spread that the Red Army would stop issuing food to the population. After that, several delegations from the district came to the commandant's office with a request to publicly shoot 30-40 hostages on the square, but not to stop the distribution of food. The population of this area was asked to find the culprit and bring him to the commandant’s office.”

According to the observations of Soviet political workers, "no matter what topic any of the Germans talks about, he reduces everything to the issues of supplying the population with food."

“The inhabitants were amazed and said to each other: “The Russians not only do us no harm, but they take care that we do not starve,” many reports noted.

Berliner Elisabeth Schmeer said in a conversation: “On January 3, my son came from the front on vacation. He served in parts of the SS. My son told me several times that the SS units in Russia did incredible things. If the Russians come here, they won't pour rose oil on you. It turned out differently. The conquered people, whose army has caused so much misfortune to Russia, the victors give food more than their government gave us. Apparently, only Russians are capable of such humanism.”

“Regarding the new supply standards, the factory worker Götze said: “This turned out to be very unexpected for us. We were intimidated by the fact that the Russians were destroying women and children. Indeed, we have been saved.”

It is unlikely that only political directives and formidable orders could stop the righteous anger of the victorious Soviet Army, which had enough reason to pour out into blind revenge on the defeated enemy. And such cases, of course, were. But they did not become a system.

The reasons for this were quite accurately determined by D. Samoilov: “Germany was not only subjected to military defeat. She was given to the mercy of the victorious army. And the people of Germany could suffer even more if it were not for the Russian national character - gentleness, non-vindictiveness, love of children, cordiality, lack of a sense of superiority, remnants of religiosity and internationalist consciousness in the very thickness of the soldier mass. Germany in 1945 was spared by the natural humanism of the Russian soldier.

Historical memory and amnesia

As rightly noted by O.A. Rzheshevsky, the fury of the Soviet soldiers who fought on enemy soil was quite understandable, "however, an avalanche of reciprocal revenge did not overwhelm Germany, and criminal acts, these inevitable companions of the war, were committed by servicemen of all allied armies." At the same time, in 1944-1945. in the Anglo-American forces "few doubted that the Germans deserved their fate..." based on the principle that "the only way to teach the krauts [the Germans' nickname given to them by the Americans comes from the German word for sauerkraut], that there is nothing good in war lies in treating them the way they once treated others.”

However, the question of the “outrages of the Red Army” against the German population is being blown up in the West today to mythical proportions, while no less large-scale similar phenomena on the part of the Western armies, which by no means had such psychological basis, which was among the Soviet soldiers, whose people survived all the horrors of fascist aggression and occupation, are hushed up and denied.

The behavior in similar situations of citizens of Eastern European countries is also forgotten, who showed much more cruelty towards the defeated Germans than the advancing Soviet units.

So, in the secret report of the Deputy People's Commissar of Internal Affairs, authorized by the NKVD of the USSR for the 1st Belorussian Front, I. Serov, to the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs, L.P. cruel attitude towards the Germans. But the Polish population, and even the new Polish authorities, were distinguished by massive oppression and cruelty towards not only German military personnel, but also towards civilian Germans.

“Local residents, Poles from Germanized Polish families, taking advantage of the opportunity, rushed to rob the farms of their former German neighbors. The Soviet command was even forced to take a number of measures to prevent mass robberies of German courtyards and the looting of industrial and other enterprises in the zones of occupation. ... Relations between the Germans and Poles in the areas occupied by Soviet troops were very tense. The Polish authorities, taking over the former German regions that came under their control from the Red Army, forbade the population to speak German, to serve in the church, and introduced corporal punishment for disobedience.

It is no coincidence that in the report of a member of the Military Council of the 1st Ukrainian Front, Lieutenant General Krainyukov, to the head of the Main Political Directorate of the Red Army on the political situation in the occupied territory of Germany in the front troops zone of April 4, 1945, the words of German residents are quoted: “It is better that we will always be under Russian occupation than to be under the rule of the Poles, since the Poles do not know how to govern and do not like to work.

Mercy and even extreme cruelty towards the defeated Germans was shown not only by the Poles, but also by other peoples who had been under fascist occupation.

So, in the political report of the political department of the 4th Panzer Army to the head of the Political Directorate of the 1st Ukrainian Front, Major General Yashechkin dated May 18, 1945 “On the attitude of the Czechoslovak population towards the Germans”, it was reported that “during their stay in Czechoslovakia, the soldiers and officers of our units were repeatedly eyewitnesses of how the local population expressed their anger and hatred towards the Germans in the most diverse, sometimes quite strange, unusual forms for us.

Anger and hatred towards the Germans are so great that often our officers and soldiers have to restrain the Czechoslovak population from arbitrary reprisals against the Nazis.

A detailed enumeration and description of these "unusual in form" massacres (burning alive at the stake, hanging by the legs, carving a swastika on the body, etc.) differs little from what the Germans themselves did in the occupied countries (see Document). However, such a literal implementation of the Old Testament principle “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth”, judging by the documents, caused bewilderment and rejection among Soviet soldiers, who, in the understanding of just retribution, for the most part proceeded from the principle that “should not be like the Germans.”

Documents also testify to the behavior of repatriates, whose motley international crowds blocked the roads of Germany: returning home from German slavery, they did not miss the opportunity to take revenge on their recent masters. In the report of the military prosecutor of the 1st Belorussian Front, Major General of Justice L. Yachenin, to the military council of the front on the implementation of the directives of the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command and the military council of the front on changing attitudes towards the German population dated May 2, 1945, it was reported that “violence, and especially robberies and hoarding are widely practiced by the repatriated who go to the repatriation points, and especially by the Italians, the Dutch, and even the Germans. At the same time, all these outrages are being blamed on our servicemen.”

The report of the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR L. Beria to Stalin, Molotov and Malenkov dated May 11, 1945 on ongoing measures to provide assistance to local authorities in the city of Berlin said: “In Berlin there is a large number of Italians, French, Poles, Americans released from prison camps and the English, who take personal belongings and property from the local population, load them onto wagons and head west. Measures are being taken to seize their looted property.”

Examples of this kind are also given in the diaries of Osmar White: “The military authorities managed to establish some semblance of order in the liberated territories. But when former forced laborers and prisoners of concentration camps filled the roads and began to plunder one town after another, the situation got out of control ... Some of the survivors of the camps gathered in gangs in order to pay off the Germans. Sparsely populated areas that were not affected during the hostilities often suffered from the robbery of these bands ... "

The same war correspondent testified: “Severe discipline prevails in the Red Army. There are no more robberies, rapes and bullying here than in any other zone of occupation. Wild stories of atrocities emerge from exaggerations and distortions of individual cases under the influence of nervousness caused by the immoderation of Russian soldiers' manners and their love of vodka. One woman who told me most of the hair-raising tales of Russian brutality was eventually forced to admit that the only evidence she saw with her own eyes was drunken Russian officers firing their pistols into the air or at bottles."

Another trend is noted in the already mentioned report of the military prosecutor of the 1st Belorussian Front dated May 2, 1945: “There are cases when the Germans engage in provocation, claiming rape, when this did not take place. I myself have established two such cases. It is no less interesting that our people sometimes, without verification, report to the authorities about the violence and murders that took place, while when verified, this turns out to be fiction. There were also vain slanders.

However, in modern Europe, when assessing the events of the Second World War, accents are deliberately rearranged, negative emotions are aroused in relation to the country and the liberating army, their negative image is fabricated and introduced into the mass consciousness. Here is just one quote from the French newspaper Le Figaro dated June 15, 2005: “The victorious Red Army, Russian leaders and communists, in particular the French, have something to apologize for. And strain your memory. All of Europe should unanimously demand it!” And this is written in a country that, after a short resistance, “fell” under the German occupiers, most of whose citizens stained themselves with collaborationism, and among the few who ended up in the French Resistance inside the country, more than half were communists and foreigners, including fleeing Soviet prisoners of war .. .

It is interesting how the historical memory of World War II was formed and evolved in Germany.

The German historian Reinhard Rurup, speaking on the topic of “how the Germans dealt with the memory of the war,” stated that “the majority of the German population perceived 1945 as a defeat, and liberation from Nazism as enslavement. With the exception of some well-known publicists, the vast majority of Germans in the first post-war years were not able to openly and mercilessly criticize what Germany had done in the Soviet Union ... Their own suffering and losses, the pain of the death of loved ones, concern for prisoners of war and missing persons, escape and daily struggle for survival. It seemed that their own suffering made the people incapable of accepting German crimes and German guilt. As soon as the first fright passed, they began to talk about the injustice of others, about the "justice of the victors."

Perhaps, the President of the Czech Republic V. Klaus characterized the current situation with the historical memory of the war most succinctly and convincingly, emphasizing that “the victory over Nazi Germany was a great and truly historic victory." He noted that recently there have been more and more attempts to revise the assessments of the results of the Second World War. “History cannot be rewritten or corrected,” he said. In his speech on the occasion of the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the liberation of North Moravia, the President said, in particular: “We often hear arguments in which the end of the Second World War is interpreted differently compared to how it was experienced by millions of our fellow citizens. The concept of liberation disappears and the emphasis on post-war period stories.

The end of the Second World War is seen as the beginning of a new totalitarian era, which soon followed in our part of Europe for four long decades. I am convinced that such an assessment of this historical event, which, without a doubt, meant liberation from Nazism and the end of the German occupation, as well as, in fact, the entire Second World War, should not prevail ...

We have no right to look at the past from a position other than from a historical position. We have no right to forget about the sequence of facts, the causal relationship. We cannot supposedly "humanistically neutral" analyze the tragic events of the war and the periods immediately after it, that is, from the point of view of a certain "symmetry of suffering." People who come up with such ideas today constantly demand from us to make more and more new “gestures of reconciliation”, which, however, actually equalize the executioners and victims, and sometimes even change their places.”

This tendency of re-emphasis, especially with the passage of time, is psychologically natural in assessments of the war.

As one of the participants in the discussion on the Internet spoke about the official interpretation of the history of the Second World War, adopted today in the Baltic countries, “different peoples have “alternative histories” that are not very similar to each other,” and “the reason for such a strange and completely different attitude to historical events is by no means a person's desire to know the truth about yesterday, but the desire to live comfortably in today's day. That is why the interpretations of the same historical event are so different for different people and different peoples... In the past, a person is looking for support and justification for the present.”

When these psychological patterns are supplemented by state interests, such a phenomenon of overestimations and even evaluative inversions becomes quite understandable: politics merges with mass public sentiments and relies on them, even if the “new interpretations” completely contradict historical truth.

Today, in the West and in Eastern Europe, a negative attitude towards Russians is purposefully fueled and cultivated, including by distorting the historical memory of the Second World War: the memory of the Soviet soldier as the liberator and savior of the peoples affected by fascism is being supplanted and a falsified image of a cruel invader is being introduced, “almost on occupying Eastern European countries for half a century. Thus, a cruel insult is inflicted on almost 7 million Soviet soldiers who participated in the Liberation Mission, of which about 1 million 100 thousand gave their lives for the freedom of the European peoples, saved many of them from complete annihilation.

Thus historical memory turns into historical amnesia.

But I would like to emphasize that the past does not forgive those who forget its lessons. Constructive memory of the Second World War should not be aimed at exacerbating problems and contradictions, but at asserting the value of the unity of the world and harmony. However, they can be based only on historical truth, on the values that guided the countries Anti-Hitler coalition in the fight against fascism, against Nazi aggression, racism and the genocide of peoples. Attempts to hush up the truth about the war, rewrite history, rearrange the accents in its interpretation are beneficial only to those forces that seek to incite new discord and confrontation.

Appendix

Political report of the political department of the 4th Panzer Army
on the attitude of the Czechoslovak population towards the Germans

2 copies / cent.

2nd in business

RGASPI. f. 17, op. 125, d. 320, ll. 160.

POLITICAL DEPARTMENT

4 TANK ARMIES

Copy

SECRET

Head of the Political Directorate of the 1st Ukrainian Front

Guard Major General Comrade. YASHECHKIN

POLITICAL REPORT

On the attitude of the Czechoslovak population towards the Germans

During their stay in Czechoslovakia, the soldiers and officers of our units were repeatedly eyewitnesses of how the local population expressed their anger and hatred towards the Germans in the most diverse, sometimes quite strange, unusual forms for us.

In the area of the hotel in Prague, Czechoslovak patriots, having gathered a group of up to 30 Germans who took part in the suppression of the uprising, forced them to lie face down on the road and each of them who tried to raise his head was beaten with sticks. This went on for 40 minutes. After that, the Germans were taken out of the city and burned there at the stake.

Meeting our advanced tanks, the Czechs on the main street of Prague lined up a large group of Germans, having previously drawn a fascist swastika on the forehead of each of them. As the tanks approached, the Germans were forced to kneel and then lie face down.

Having caught one of the leaders of the Hitlerite clique in Prague, Czechoslovak patriots usually stripped them to the waist, smeared them with paint, forced them to work in this form to fix the pavement, dismantle the barricades, and often beat them.

On May 10, four German soldiers were detained in Prague, who, hiding in the attic of a building, continued to kill Red Army soldiers and city residents with sniper fire. The detained Germans were immediately hung up by their feet on poles, doused with gasoline and burned.

In the area of the technical school, the inhabitants of the city, stripping 15 German women to the waist and smearing them with paint, forced them to work on fixing the pavement, with a large crowd of people. After that, the Germans were taken outside the city and shot.

On the eastern side of the city, up to 100 Germans were shot in one of the courtyards. The execution was carried out alone from a small-caliber rifle.

On Narodnaya Street during May 9 and 10, one could often see how Czech patriots beat the Germans with sticks, doused them with cold water and used other tortures.

On this street, 5 Germans in SS uniforms were kneeling, each of them had a stone on their heads. These Germans were approached in turn by children, women, men, and by hitting the stones lying on their heads with a stick they proclaimed "Heil Hitler".

Another group of Germans in the amount of 9 people (7 men and 2 women) were undressed by the inhabitants of the city, beaten and then, with their hands pulled up, were led along the street with a large crowd of people.

On the same street, two Gestapo men, suspended on poles by the legs, were burned. An inscription was hung near their corpses: "For the murder and death of our brothers."

Similar facts could be found not only in Prague, but also in other cities and towns of Czechoslovakia.

In the village of Rodosovitsy, at the moment when the Czechs were escorting the Germans into captivity, one of the women, running up to the Germans, began to beat them with exclamations of a curse. Looking at her, others did the same. So almost all the captured Germans in the column were beaten to bruises.

In the city of Most, a group of Czechs, together with Russians liberated from a prisoner of war camp, killed the head of the camp with sticks.

In the village of Lushka, with the arrival of our units, the Czechs drove out all the Germans living here (290 people), and confiscated their remaining property.

In the city of Ryzhichany, all the Germans who had previously lived were also driven into one place. Czech patriots cut off a piece of hair on each of them and then sent them under escort to Germany.

An SS colonel was caught by the Czechoslovakians 13 km from the village of Mshec. After lengthy torture, they hung him by the feet on a tree and burned him, having previously carved a fascist swastika on his back.

All these facts are not isolated. In almost every case, a large population took part in the massacre of the Germans.

It is interesting to note such a fact that in a number of places in Prague in the first days of liberation one could see portraits of Hitler hanging on something with a rope tied around his neck. On one of the streets of the city, a metal bust of Hitler was hung on a rope and a stick lay next to it. Every Czech passing by hit this bust with a stick and spat on it.

All this is explained by the enormous malice and thirst for revenge that the Czechoslovak people feed on the Germans for all the crimes committed.

Prague resident Dr. Kot says:

“The Germans oppressed the Czechoslovak people for six years. Four days before the arrival of the Red Army in Prague, they carried out mass executions of men and women. Even children, in front of their parents, were broadcast on special hooks, or they were put in a row and crushed by tank tracks.

A resident of the city of Kladno, Vetslov Golman, says:

“With the arrival of the Germans, a dark night hung over us. They mocked us as they wanted. All these 6 years the mass extermination of Czechs continued. The Germans treated us worse than cattle. A starvation ration was set at 130 gr. bread per person, and forced to work 12 hours a day. Those who refused to work were sent to concentration camps.”

Teacher Karla Prokhanova says:

“The Germans closed all our educational institutions. Students were arrested en masse and sent to Germany. Further fate they are not known. All Czech primary schools. Only the Germans were allowed to dispense medicine from pharmacies. The hospitals didn't work."

Similar statements of Czechoslovaks are found everywhere.

Anger and hatred towards the Germans is so great that often our officers and soldiers have to restrain the Czechoslovak population from arbitrary reprisals against the Nazis.

P / p Head of the Political Department 4 TA

Guard Colonel - Pantry

Correct: Head of Information Department

Organizing department of GLAVPURKKA /Leonov/

1 copy/ centuries

RGASPI. f. 17, op. 125, d. 320, ll. 161-163.

Notes

Goebbels J. Diaries 1945. The last notes. Per. with him. Smolensk, 1998. // http://www.erlib.com/Joseph_Goebbels/Diary_1945_year._Recent_entries/5/

There. http://www.erlib.com/Joseph_Goebbels/Diary_1945_year._Recent_entries/13/

Ryan K. Last fight. The storming of Berlin through the eyes of eyewitnesses. Per. from English. M., 2003. S. 23. // http://militera.lib.ru/h/ryan_c/01.html

Sulzman R. Propaganda as a weapon in war // Results of the Second World War. Conclusions of the vanquished. SPb-M.: Polygon, AST, 1998. S. 536-537.

WhiteOsmar. Conquerors" Road: An Eyewitness Account of Germany 1945. Cambridge University Press, 2003 . XVII, 221 pp. ISBN 0521537517. All quotations are from the translation available at: http://www.argo.net.au/andre/osmarwhite .html

Petrov Igor ( labas). Decree. op.

See for example: Bordyugov G."The war will write everything off"? Wehrmacht and the Red Army: on the nature of crimes against the civilian population. Report at the International Scientific Conference "Experience of World Wars in the History of Russia", September 11, 2005, Chelyabinsk. http://www.airo-xxi.ru/gb/doklady/doklad01.htm; and etc.

Hoffman Joachim. Stalin's war of annihilation (1941-1945). Planning, implementation, documents. M., 2006.

JoachimHoffmann. Stalins Vernichtungskrieg 1941-1945. F.A. Verlagsbuchhandlung. GmbH, Munich, 1998.

See for example: Sander H., Johr B. BeFreier und Befreite. Krieg, Vergewaltigung, Kinder. Munich, 1992.; Zayas A.-M. de. A Terrible Revenge: The Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans, 1944-1950. NY, 1994; Naimark N. The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945-1949. Harvard, 1995; Hitchcock W.I. The Struggle for Europe. The Turbulent History of a Divided Continent 1945-2002. NY, 2003; Hastings M. Armageddon: The Battle for Germany 1944-45. New York, 2004.

Cm.: Nesterenko Yuri. Day of national shame, or Who won the Second World War // http://yun.complife.ru/miscell/antivict.htm#article

Diary of a cow - Net worms against Victory Day. // http://kkatya.livejournal.com/272537.html

Bordyugov G., Dymarsky V., Zakharov D. The Wehrmacht and the Red Army against the civilian population // Radio station "Echo of Moscow" / Transmissions / Price of Victory / 16.02.2009. http://www.echo.msk.ru/programs/victory/572480-echo/; Solonin M., Bordyugov G., Dymarsky V., Zakharov D. Red Army on German territory. // Radio station "Echo of Moscow" / Transmissions / Price of Victory / 10/26/2009. http://www.echo.msk.ru/guests/12328/.

The film "Nameless. Woman in Berlin (2008), which won the Best International Film Award at the 2009 International Film Festival in Santa Barbara, was not admitted to Russian distribution, but was released on DVD and is actively discussed in blogs

His own. My life, or did you dream about me? .. M .: Magazine "Our Contemporary", No. 10-12, 2005, No. 1, 2006. http:// militera. lib. en/ prose/ Russian/ bogomolov_ vo/03. html

Russian state archive socio-political history (hereinafter - RGASPI). F. 17. Op. 125. D. 321. L. 10-12.

From an interview with N.A. Orlov on the site "I remember". http://www.iremember.ru/minometchiki/orlov-naum-aronovich/stranitsa-6.html

Samoilov D. Decree. op. S. 88.

Bogomolov V.O. My life, or did you dream about me?.. // Our contemporary. 2005. Nos. 10-12; 2006. No. 1. http:// militera. lib. en/ prose/ Russian/ bogomolov_ vo/03. html

From the Political Report on bringing to the personnel of the directive of Comrade. Stalin No. 11072 dated April 20, 1945 in the 185th Infantry Division. April 26, 1945. Cit. on: Bogomolov V.O. Decree. op. http:// militera. lib. en/ prose/ Russian/ bogomolov_ vo

Aftalion F. Moscow must pay the debt of memory (“Le Figaro”, France) // InoSMI.RU. http://www.inosmi.ru/stories/05/04/14/3445/220328.html

Today, “the period of occupation in France is preferred to be remembered as a heroic time. Charles de Gaulle, the Resistance... However, the impartial footage of the photo chronicle shows that everything was not quite the way the veterans tell and write in the history books.” (See: Frames that have become a national shame in France // http://svpressa.ru/war/photo/6743). Not so long ago, the Paris Historical Library hosted an exhibition by French photographer André Zucca, “The French Under Occupation.” The exhibition featured over 250 color photographs taken between 1941 and 1944. The photographs show how Parisians enjoyed life on the banks of the Seine, in cafes and city parks, on the sun-drenched Champs Elysées. Parisian fashionistas flaunt their new hats, lovers embrace, children roller-skate, people ride bicycles, feed an elephant in the city zoo... Nazi officers walk with the townspeople. “The picture is simply idyllic”, “the general impression of a peaceful and not at all unhappy life”, which is not at all overshadowed by red flags with a black swastika. The exhibition caused a huge scandal, the mayor's office of the French capital banned its display in Paris. City council member and head of the cultural department, Christophe Girard, told reporters that the exhibit was "unbearable." (See: The fight against fascism in French... http://szhaman.livejournal.com/219207.html).

Ryurup R. Decree. op. S. 80.

Cit. on: Vladimirsky A. Pre-anniversary “alternative history”: the Molotov-Ribentrop Pact, the occupation of the Baltic states and the Katyn case in the Russian media and the Internet // 60th anniversary of the end of World War II and the Great Patriotic War: winners and losers in the context of politics, mythology and memory. Materials for the International Forum (Moscow, September 2005). Ed. F. Bomsdorf and G. Bordyugov. Liberal Reading Library. Issue. 16. M., 2005. S. 228.

Krestovsky V. War and new ideological markers in the Anglo-American media // 60th anniversary of the end of World War II and the Great Patriotic War: winners and losers in the context of politics, mythology and memory. Materials for the International Forum (Moscow, September 2005). M., 2005. S. 148.

The seal of secrecy has been removed. Losses of the Armed Forces of the USSR in wars, combat operations and military conflicts. M., 1993. S. 325-326.