In the previous parts (part 1 and part 2), documents and memoirs of war veterans were considered, which indicate that the leadership of the USSR and the spacecraft was not worried about the deployed number of German troops near the border and the places of their concentration until the evening of 21.6.41. Therefore, 21 June, at the first meeting with Stalin, not particularly important issues were considered: the creation of the Southern Front (SF), the appointment of the commander of the second line armies and the leaders of the Northern Front, the South-Western Front (SWF) and the SF. Consideration of secondary issues eight hours before the start of the war indicates that until 20-00 on June 21, the leadership of the country and the army they did not expect the beginning of a full-scale war with Germany at dawn on June 22. In the new part, it is proposed to consider the events at the headquarters of the Moscow Military District (MVO) on the eve of the war and after its start, which are associated with the formation of the front-line directorate of the Law Firm.
Deploying frontline control
On June 19, 1941, a cipher telegram (SHT) was sent from the General Staff to the headquarters of the Arkhangelsk Military District (ARVO) about the beginning of the deployment of the front-line command. The text of the telegram could not be found, but in another document there is a link to the specified PC.
PCS # 2706 / org dated 24.6.41:
“To the chief of staff of ARVO. On the formation of the army command front instead of command.
Copies to the deputy chiefs of the Main Political Directorate, the Operations Directorate of the General Staff, the chief of the personnel department of the spacecraft.
In the modification of the directive of the General Staff No.org / 1/524033 from 19.06.41 g. the field command of the front envisaged according to the deployment scheme should not be formed. It is necessary to form a field administration of the army with service bodies, security, editorial office and printing house of the army newspaper for the state No. 48/926.
The formation of the field administration of the front, the editorial office and printing house of the front newspaper are removed altogether. V. Sokolovsky.
On June 19, the General Staff made a decision to start the mobilization deployment of the front command on the basis of the ArVO. Where was the deployed control from ARVO supposed to go?
On the evening of June 21, a decision was made to create a law firm and armies of the second line. On June 22, the headquarters of the Law Firm is detached from the Moscow Military District. The commander of the armies of the second line, Marshal S. M. Budyonny is forced to form his own headquarters on his own. On June 21-22, an order to cancel the deployment of front-line command in ARVO is not received. Therefore, control from the ArVO was not intended either for the headquarters of the Law Firm, or for the headquarters of the armies of the second line.
The author has only one version about the purpose of the specified management, which has no documentary evidence: the management was intended for the commander of the direction, which included the SWF and the SF. Late in the evening of June 22, the Chief of the General Staff arrives at the headquarters of the South-Western Front to monitor the implementation of measures for the counterstrike on Lublin. At the headquarters, he learns about the real situation at the front, and on June 23 he sees an ever worsening state of affairs. The situation is changing rapidly, and its headquarters is still in the stage of formation and it is not known when it will be able to arrive. In such a situation, the direction headquarters is no longer needed. Now, if two fronts were advancing abroad and between the fronts and the headquarters of the South-Western direction there would be a huge document flow - then it would be another matter … Perhaps, on his instructions, the Assistant Chief of the General Staff, General Sokolovsky, cancels the earlier decision, which is reflected in the SHT.
The cycle showed that not all military and civilian specialists in Moscow expected the war on June 22. To understand the atmosphere of that time, I will cite an excerpt from the diary of Academician V. I. Vernadsky: “[19.6.41]
They say that Germany was given an ultimatum - at 40 o'clock to withdraw its troops from Finland - in the north, near our borders. The Germans agreed, but asked for a delay - 70 hours, which was given …
[Morning June 22] Apparently, there really was an improvement - or rather, a temporary calm with Germany. The ultimatum was presented. The Germans conceded. Finland had to destroy the fortifications near our borders (in the north), built by the Germans. Apparently, in connection with this - the departure of the British ambassador and the Finnish one? Grabar said that he saw one of the generals, who is now being informed about the political situation both in the party and in the bureaucratic environment, who told him that for several months the danger of a clash with Germany disappeared …
Calling the commanding staff of the headquarters of the Moscow Military District
At the headquarters of the Moscow Military District on June 19, everything is ordinary, quiet and calm. The staff members assigned to the field administration and the assigned staff work quietly in their places: in the headquarters of the Moscow Military District and in civilian organizations. They are not yet aware of the imminent field trip. The Moscow Military District is not canceling the planned military field trip for 23 June. Probably, during the study trip, they should have prepared the assigned command personnel for staff work. Generals Pokrovsky and Vorobiev wrote in their memoirs about the unpreparedness of the field administrations for their work.
A. P. Pokrovsky (later chief of staff of the armies of the second line):
The events of the beginning of the war showed that we were not prepared to organize field control. Regulations on the field management of the army in war conditions was not worked out before the war. There were notes, projects, but there was no such Regulation on the field management of the army, on the General Headquarters and in general on the transition of the army to martial law …
That is, there were personnel, but even the presence of the best personnel, knowledgeable, experienced people - this still does not create a workable headquarters in itself. The headquarters is being formed in the work: it must be prepared. And what did we do?
For example, in order to create the headquarters of the Law Firm, the department of the MVO was sent there. But the management of the Moscow Military District was not in the know. It did not know this theater, nor these troops, nor all that was connected with the preparatory work that preceded the war in the headquarters of those formations that were to be deployed precisely in this theater of military operations. The headquarters of the Moscow Military District, which arrived there, to the south, and became the headquarters of the Law Firm, took a long time to understand the situation and get used to it. Of course it was wrong …
Anticipating hostilities, we could have there, in the south, a pre-formed management of the headquarters of the Law Firm. And it would have cost not so much in peacetime and could have been created not openly, but closed, under a different name …
V. F. Vorobiev:
Since 1940, he served as chief of staff of the 61st Rifle Corps, preparing for a number of military games in the district and on maneuvers to work in the western direction …
On 21 June 1941, I was appointed quite unexpectedly for me as the chief of the operational department of the headquarters of the Law Firm, which was formed from the staff of the Moscow Military District. I did not study the southern direction and did not know this theater.
The staff of the Law Firm was 50% staffed from reserve officers drafted into the army within two or three days on the eve of the war. In the operational department, of which I was the head, of the called-up reserve officers, no one could independently keep a log of combat actions, draw up a combat report, an operational summary, systematically keep a working map. This is explained by the fact that at the training camp the officers assigned to the district headquarters were not engaged and were not used in the positions for which they were assigned during the war …
On Friday, June 20, the headquarters of military unit 1080, including the enrolled personnel, goes up in alarm. This is evidenced by the text of the title “
Consequently, there was a call (gathering or alarm), for which one commander from the operational department (OO) did not appear.
Why did the challenge take place on June 20th? In mid-August, when it was already clear to everyone that the war would last a long time, a new document appeared. The document says about the accrual of seniority from June 20 commanders who are called up to the spacecraft. The names of the commanders are also included in the list of arrivals on call.
Below is a list of the commanding officers of the military unit 1080, which came on call. On June 21, both lists were sent to the Deputy Chief of Staff of the Moscow Military District for Logistics, Major General I. M. Karavaev for staging for allowance. This is evidenced by the date on the resolution.
The list includes 20 people, including the deputy chief of staff - chief of the PO, General Vorobyov, and the deputy chief of the PO, Major Lyamin. If captain Kolokoltsev had arrived, there would have been 21 people on the list. Don't you think that this number of commanders is too small for the OO of the headquarters of the army or front?
At that time there were no computers, the text was typed on a typewriter or handwritten. OO is a lot of summaries, maps and other documents. Even the two documents above are typed on a typewriter. The furnishings on the maps for beauty were drawn by draftsmen. They also placed text on the cards in both headings and tables. Of course, when time allowed.
Before both documents were handed over to General Karavaev, one draftsman (Red Army soldier Silaev) and one typist Ushakov were added to the list of departures in red pencil. If a Red Army soldier is a forced person - wherever he is sent, he will go there, then a typist is a different matter … A typist is a civilian person, and she, as a military man, is not entitled to an irregular working day. Civilian personnel have a standardized working day. According to the law, he should pay for processing, but somehow this issue was still resolved. Note that they were included in the list one specialist each, bringing the total number to 22 people.
At that time, the OO also included a branch of the cipher-staff service (SHS), who were withdrawn from it only by the beginning of July 1941. The reason was the violations revealed during the inspection of the Operations Directorate of the General Staff. In particular, it was found that outgoing and incoming SHT on operational issues were in the public domain for management employees.
There is not a single ransomware in the above list! Where was the field administration going to go without the specialists of the ShShS? Right! To study! Ciphers are not a cheap thing, and you can teach OO personnel using unencrypted messages (without raising ShShS specialists).
Field control of the front or army
How many people were in the OO of the headquarters of the army or front? Information on the number of people in the NGO on the eve of the war could not be found. However, it is known how many regular posts were in the OO of the headquarters of the army and front for state 02/45, which was introduced on July 1. The following abbreviations are used in the table in the figure: "military personnel" - military personnel, "military personnel" - civilian personnel.
Without the OO chief, who is also the deputy chief of staff, the 02/45 staff division has 35 positions for the front headquarters and 21 for the army headquarters. We will remove from the list of military personnel in the naval unit (senior assistant - 1 and assistant - 2). Positions related to naval affairs can only be held by servicemen of the naval commissariat (captain of the 3rd rank and lieutenant commander). There are no naval servicemen on the OO list of June 20. Let's add to the number of employees of the OO the head of the department, who is on the list of June 20. We get the number of positions in the OO front and army headquarters 33 and 19, respectively. It turns out that in the list of June 20, the number of people (21) is close to the size of the PA of the army headquarters (19). The only difference is that in the OO of the front and army headquarters according to the state 02/45, there are 3 or 2 draftsmen and typists, respectively. There is only one draftsman and one typist on the travel list on June 23rd.
By the way, there were 29 and 22 specialists for the headquarters of the front and the army, respectively, in the dedicated encryption department for staff No. 02/45. The ShShS of the front headquarters also included a school of cipher clerks with a staff of 65 specialists.
It turns out that the field administration of the army, not the front, was going on a study trip on June 23. Specialists of the ShShS were not included in the number of those leaving. After the call, the assigned staff was dismissed to their homes until Monday. The figure below shows that the commander who was called from the reserve on June 20 to participate in the field trip is called up to serve only after the start of the war.
In the post-war period, the enrolled personnel were called up for training camps, and they received wages at their place of work in a civil organization or at an enterprise. It can be assumed that the same practice could have existed before the war. Therefore, the commanders who arrived on call were warned about a study trip on the 23rd and were released to their homes. On June 22, they were called to the spacecraft, as they had to leave for the place of deployment of their military unit - the headquarters of the Law Firm.
Memories of veterans from the headquarters of the Moscow Military District
After training, the personnel entered service on Saturday 21 June. On this day, there is no excitement at the headquarters of the Moscow Military District about the rise on the eve of the assigned staff of the field administration. After all, the trip was planned, educational, short and short distance.
General A. I. Shebunin (chief quartermaster of the Moscow Military District) was not planned to participate in the field trip. He wrote that June 21 was an ordinary Saturday day:
With the onset of the summer heat, the families of the administrative staff of the district usually moved from Moscow to a dacha in Serebryany Bor, which was then considered a suburb. On Saturday, June 21, many of my employees, as always, gathered at the dacha. Work at the district headquarters on Saturdays ended at five o'clock, then only the operational duty officers remained there. So it was on that sabbath day.
Divisional Commander Zakharkin was at the General Staff of the spacecraft that day, from where he arrived at the dacha. According to him, I realized that the atmosphere in the General Staff seemed him restless. After exchanging views, Ivan Grigorievich and I agreed that there are very real grounds for alarm. It was alarming in my heart when I left the divisional commander's hospitable dacha late in the evening. But still I was far from thinking that only a few hours separate us from the beginning of the terrible events that are destined to shake the world …
Chief of Engineering Troops of the Moscow Military District A. F. Khrenov writes:
Monday [June 23, 1941] [came June 22].
Memoirs of a former cadet of the Moscow Red Banner School. Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR V. P. Diveeva:
At this time, I was just attached to the headquarters of the Moscow Military District, was sent to the post of clerk. We were left at work for the weekend, but we did not feel any anxiety, and then early in the morning it is announced that Germany has attacked the Soviet Union. Anxiety immediately appeared in the headquarters, you know, even some kind of excitement. It turned out that in total there were about 150 people from the school at the headquarters of clerks and in other minor positions, we were quickly gathered and sent to the school …
A slight disquiet at the headquarters of the Moscow Military District. It could be associated with the expected field control exercises, the 7th mechanized corps, the 1st air defense corps. It is possible that the exercises were expected in other formations of the district. They left the clerks-cadets on the night of June 22, but an alarming state appeared only after the outbreak of the war …
Early morning June 22
Commander of the Moscow Military District, General I. V. Tyulenev wrote:
It was already getting dark when I left the headquarters of the Moscow Military District … I got out of the car in a quiet Rzhevsky lane, where I lived with my family - my wife and two children. At 3 am on June 22, I was awakened by a phone call. They were urgently summoned to the Kremlin … Then Voroshilov announced that I was appointed commander of the forces of the Law Firm. It was proposed to leave for the destination today …
It turns out that General I. V. Tyulenev until dawn on June 22 did not know about the decision to create a law firm. One inaccuracy that is immediately visible: a call to the Kremlin at 3-00. At that time, there was no one from the country's leadership in the Kremlin.
Information that they learned about the formation of the headquarters of the Law Firm only in the morning of June 22 is confirmed by other generals from the headquarters of the Moscow Military District. From their recollections, you can find out a more exact time when the commander of the Moscow Military District was invited to the Kremlin and when the command personnel began to be called to the Moscow Military District headquarters.
General A. F. Khrenov:
As soon as I fell asleep, the phone rang.
- Comrade General, - the excited voice of the operational duty headquarters of the district was heard, - the commander is calling you. Ordered not to linger. The car is leaving now …
In the reception room of the commander, I found the chief of staff, Major General G. D. Shishenin, head of the political department of the divisional commissar F. N. Voronin, chief of the rear, Major General A. I. Shebunin and several other comrades …
Soon the commander appeared and invited us to the meeting room of the Military Council … Entering the hall and accepting the report of the chief of staff, he did not sit down, as usual, but remained standing: “Comrades, at four o'clock with minutes I was summoned to the Kremlin. K. E. Voroshilov and S. K. Tymoshenko told me that Nazi Germany treacherously attacked our Motherland …
Ivan Vladimirovich said that he was appointed commander of the forces of the Law Firm, a member of the military council - army commissar of the 1st rank A. I. Zaporozhets, chief of staff - Major General G. D. Shishenin. The respective chiefs from the district are appointed as chiefs of the combat arms and front services. Field control leaves for the front in two echelons. Destination - Vinnytsia. The composition of the first echelon should be ready for departure today, the composition of the second - tomorrow. Then he announced who was leaving the first echelon, determined the gathering time at the Kievsky railway station at 15 o'clock and ordered me to take up the duties of the chief of the first special train … . Arkady Fyodorovich specifies the time of the call of the commander of the Moscow Military District to the Kremlin: at 4 o'clock with minutes.
General A. I. Shebunin:
Only in the morning did General Shebunin learn that he was also a member of the command staff of the headquarters of the Law Firm and that he was to leave for Vinnitsa in the first echelon. The destination was announced for the first time on the morning of June 22nd. That is why no one knew where the front headquarters would have to be located and there were no maps. The time of the call was also specified: at six o'clock in the morning. There is also an inaccuracy in the memoirs: the order of the People's Commissar of Defense was not yet at dawn on June 22.
General V. F. Vorobyov wrote that on the evening of June 21, he unexpectedly learned about his appointment as the head of the Public Association of the Law Firm. In the list of arrivals on call on June 20, a check mark was put in front of his name in red pencil. Of course, he was not obliged to come to the headquarters of the Moscow Military District on call, but on June 20 he should have learned about his participation in the field trip. The unexpected appointment on the evening of June 21 raises doubts, since neither the head of the engineering service, nor the chief quartermaster of the Moscow Military District on Saturday still do not know about their appointments. General Vorobyov or is mistaken in pointing out the 21st, confusing it with the early morning of June 22nd. Or he could have been notified of the new appointment by a certain acquaintance from the General Staff. But these are only the assumptions of the author.
The first documents of the operational department of the headquarters of the Law Firm
After notifying the command staff about the separation of the front-line command from the Moscow Military District, the rise of the assigned personnel begins in full.
The case of OO military unit 1080 begins with the document presented above (sheet 1). However, this does not mean that this document was prepared earlier than the subsequent documents available in the case. Documents in files are filed as they enter the secret department.
In the case, behind the list of the commanding staff, decreasing by echelon, there are lists of the commanding staff who appeared and did not appear on call (sheets 2 and 3). On the above lists there is a resolution: "Ex. No. 1 has been handed over to Major General G. Karavaev. 21.6.41." Consequently, both documents were printed on the evening of June 20 or the morning of June 21, and the resolution was applied on Saturday. There is not a single correction in both documents - these are ordinary documents of peacetime. Nicely designed: no mistakes or fixes.
The new document (list of descending echelon) is already a wartime document, as it has numerous edits:
1) Captains Dax and Bozhenko were removed from the list. Captain Bozhenko departed for Vinnitsa on June 22, and Captain Dax departed on June 23 with the main composition of the OO;
2) the list includes specialists from the ShShS who were called up only on June 22;
3) three specialists of the ShShS and 11 cadets, who were assigned to the OO on June 22, were added to the list with a handwritten test;
4) the list was supplemented by personnel twice. The first time "" is seen above the mention of cadets. We see the second signature at the bottom of the document.
Thus, we can conclude that the list of commanding staff was prepared no earlier than June 22. Consequently, sheets 2 and 3 in the OO file appeared earlier than the indicated list.
Captain D. K. Kolokoltsev, who did not arrive on call. - this is Kolokoltsev Dmitrievich Konstantinovich. In the list of command personnel who did not appear on call, he is crossed out with a red pencil. So he did come. Probably June 22 or 23. Subsequently, he did not serve at the headquarters of the Law Firm.
From the personnel of the OO, marked in the list of command personnel (departing by the echelon), it was possible to establish:
1) Zyabkina M. V., Smirnova A. I., Stremyakova B. P. and Sobolev A. P. - called up from the stock on 22.6.41 G.;
2) specialists of the ShShS Lyubimov N. S., Platonov M. I., Yumatov A. S., Kochko I. L., Belousov V. P. were called up from the reserve also on June 22.
In the column "" the rest of the ShShS specialists are marked with "". Probably they were also called from the stock on June 22, and the absence of a date is negligence or haste in paperwork. A similar situation exists in the documents of senior lieutenant of the administrative service B. V. Rykunov, intendant Rybalchenko Ya. V. and other OO commanders recruited from the reserve;
3) the list mentions three typists. These are civilian personnel: Savchuk, Berezhkovskaya and Ushakova (later the name of the typist Zakharova appears in the documents of the headquarters of the Law Firm), who were not planned to participate in the field trip on June 23. In the documents of A. P. Savchuk, Z. A. Berezhkovskaya. and Zakharova A. N. the date of joining the service is marked - June 22, 1941;
4) of the draftsmen who ended up in the OO headquarters of the Law Firm, only M. A. Ryabinov was restored. (called 22.6.41 g.) and Denisov S. B. (called 23.6.41 Kirov Regional Military Commissariat of Moscow);
The list says about 11 cadets without specifying the military institutions in which they previously served. As of July 20, there are 7 cadets-trainees and 9 cadets of the NKVD frontier school in the state of the OO.
Out of 7 cadets-trainees, it was possible to establish: Terekhin Ivan Vasilyevich, Krasavin Nikolai Alexandrovich, Korshunov Georgy Gennadievich and Zhelanny Mikhail Vasilyevich. All of them were drafted into the spacecraft in 1940, sent to the active army June, 22 and served in encryption communications. It turns out that they are all from the encryption school of the Moscow Military District and were assigned to the OO as encryption trainees. At that time, only commanders of spacecraft from a junior lieutenant and above could be ciphermen.
Out of 9 cadets of border guards, it was possible to identify only two cadets of the Higher Border School (Moscow): Yu. E. Gazenklever. and Nagarnikova V. D. On the website of the school there is information that due to the outbreak of the war, cadets who entered the school in 1940 (the 17th enrollment of the main students), starting from June 22, began to be sent to military units sent to the front or deployed in defensive positions. On June 21, no one has yet sent border school cadets to the troops.
It is difficult to say which cadets made up the number 11 on the list. It is possible that a larger number of cadets were later included in the echelon when dispatched than was noted on the list.
From the data presented, it is clear that the OO of the headquarters of the Law Firm began its deployment in full only on June 22. The order of the Military Council of the Law Firm dated 2.7.41 states:
It is required to replenish management and departments with the missing personnel, using in the first place surplus departments and departments …
It turns out that as of July 1, the headquarters of the Law Firm had over-staff personnel. This is confirmed by the document.
The end follows …
