On the Internet on several sites there is a material by S. G. Pokrovsky entitled "Treason of 1941", and on August 4, 11 and 18, the newspaper "Krasnaya Zvezda" published an article "The Mysteries of 1941", which is an abbreviated version of the material posted on the Internet …
In fact, there are no mysteries at that time. It's just that the author, in pursuit of a sensation by distorting the events and facts of the initial period of the Great Patriotic War, wanted to create a sensation and wrote about the betrayal of the command of the Western and Southwestern fronts and some commanders of the armies of these fronts in 1941, considering the circumstances in which they found themselves as the main reasons defeat of our troops in the initial period of the war.
The author of the material believes that some commanders deliberately, prematurely withdrew troops from the areas where huge stocks of weapons, fuels and lubricants, ammunition, foodstuffs necessary to support the conduct of hostilities were concentrated, and thereby provided them with the invading German-fascist troops. But, as you know, the main reasons for the defeat of the Red Army in 1941 were the untimely bringing into combat readiness of the troops of the border military districts, insufficient training and weak morale and combat qualities of personnel, and poor command and control of troops. Such troops could not stop the offensive of the German groups and were forced to retreat.
But the author does not provide any documents in support of his contrived version. There are no references to the sources of the information obtained in the material. The events of the war are distorted. Operational reasoning is primitive, erroneous and offensive to all those who fought, died in the war, and were also convicted and rehabilitated in the post-war years. Also far-fetched are allegations that our armies in the directions of the main attacks of the Germans (8th and 11th armies of the North-Western Front, 4th Army of the Western Front and 5th Army of the South-Western Front) were not defeated and for a long time they successfully fought, unlike other armies. He writes that the 11th Army of the North-Western Front and its 11th Mechanized Corps, the weakest in composition, armed with T-26 tanks, attacked the enemy and drove him abroad.
But, firstly, the 11th Mechanized Corps was part of the 3rd Army of the Western Front, and not part of the 11th Army of the Northwestern Front. It had 241 tanks, including T-34 tanks. There were no such tanks in the German army at that time. The 11th Army and the 11th Mechanized Corps did not drive the Germans abroad. By the end of the first day of the war, the 11th Army was cut into parts and its formations were hurriedly retreating to Kaunas and Vilna. Fulfilling the order of the High Command to strike and capture the Suwalki area by the end of June 24, the commanders of the Western and North-Western fronts attracted small forces: the 48th rifle corps and the 12th mechanized corps. Only the 28th Panzer Division managed to take the starting position. The rest of the corps divisions entered the battle in scattered groupings and fought heavy battles.
The 41st mechanized corps of the Germans, repelling the blow, surrounded the 12th mechanized corps, developing the offensive, captured Daugavpils on the move, crossed the Neman and created a bridgehead for the attack on Leningrad. Front troops suffered heavy losses. So, the remnants of the defeated 5th Panzer Division of the 3rd Mechanized Corps of the 11th Army had only three tanks, 12 armored personnel carriers and 40 vehicles. This division ended up in the zone of the neighboring Western Front.
The author also invented the successful offensive actions of the 4th Army of the Western Front. In fact, the units of the three divisions located in the Brest Fortress could not even leave it. The divisions of the 4th army did not hold the Mozyr fortified area for a month, and their remnants were transferred to the 3rd army. The 4th Army fought heavy battles since the beginning of the war. As the chief of staff of the army Sandalov wrote, from June 22 to 26, during the five days of the war, the army's formations were thrown back 300 km. In July, the remnants of the army units were withdrawn to the Novozybkov area and subordinated to the 21st Army. The commander of the 4th Army, Major General Korobkov, was removed from office on July 8, and the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court was sentenced to death for cowardice, the collapse of management and unauthorized abandonment of positions. In November 1957 he was posthumously rehabilitated.
The author's assertions that the 5th Army of the Southwestern Front inflicted 150 strikes, repelled the offensive of 11 German divisions, with only 2,400 men on the 300 km of the front, look ridiculous. Archival documents do not confirm such actions of the army. Consequently, Pokrovsky's assertion that the armies of the fronts, which were in the directions of the main attacks of the German fascist army groups, were not defeated and fought successfully, does not correspond to reality.
As for the actions of the 12th Army of the Southwestern Front, here, too, the author is at odds with facts and reality. Thus, the assertion that the air strike of the army on June 25 on targets in Hungary provoked the entry of Budapest into the war is far from the truth. Long before the war, the Hungarian government signed an agreement with Hitler's Germany on military cooperation, and its troops were included in the German Army Group South. The statement that the 12th Army did not fight at the beginning of the war does not stand up to criticism either. Yes, sometimes the withdrawal of the army was premature, but one cannot agree that the commander of the army, Ponedelin, deliberately brought it into the Uman cauldron and surrendered. While in German captivity, he rejected Vlasov's offer of cooperation and spat in his face.
Pokrovsky indiscriminately accuses many commanders of deliberately failing to comply with the directives of Moscow, in particular the directive of the High Command issued at 21.10 on June 22, 1941. It set tasks for the Northwestern, Western and Southwestern Fronts to deliver powerful blows and capture the Suwalki and Lublin area by the end of June 24. For its implementation, the North-Western Front allocated a mechanized and rifle corps, and the Western Front - a mechanized corps and a cavalry division. Some mechanized corps of the Southwestern Front were located at a distance of 300-400 km from Lublin, they needed 3-4 days to advance and concentrate.
It is not true that the troops of the 3rd Army of the Western Front were located 20 km from Suwalki and had the opportunity to fire long-range artillery (which it did not have) this area.
The fulfillment of this directive was unrealistic, and this complicated the situation and the organization of repelling the enemy offensive.
As for the counterstrike of the Southwestern Front at the end of June 1941 in the Brody, Lutsk, Rovno area, the author considers it to be military operations in his rear. Four mechanized corps needed to make marches over a considerable distance. Only the 8th mechanized corps of Ryabyshev was able to reach the starting line in time with tank units, the motorized infantry lagged behind. The corps attacked the enemy at different times and had no success. Only the 8th mechanized corps advanced 30-35 km and burst into Brody, creating a serious threat to the advancing German units. The author asks whether the mechanized corps fought? Yes, they fought, but they fought badly. The commanders of the fronts and armies used them ineptly, set them unrealistic tasks, changed them often. As a result, they made unnecessary long marches of up to 400-500 km, leaving up to half of all available tanks on the roads. At the same time, not only as a result of enemy air raids, but also due to poor training of tank drivers and commanders, untimely provision of fuel and lubricants and repair of damaged vehicles.
The passage about Vlasov, associated with the passivity of the 4th mechanized corps in the Lvov region, and his betrayal in 1942 does not give grounds to link these two events and to believe that he was a participant in the great conspiracy with the Germans in 1941. The author's reasoning about the defeat at Vyazma, "Vyazemsky cauldron", that it was allegedly caused by the location of nine divisions of the people's militia in the first echelon of the front in the Vyazma region, are primitive and untenable. One of the main reasons for the defeat of the Western and Reserve Fronts is that the General Headquarters and the command of these fronts concentrated their main forces in the Vyazma area, the German Army Group Center struck the main blow north and south of Vyazma, surrounded the main forces of the two fronts. At the same time, the Reserve Front was poorly located - its two armies were located in the first echelon, and four armies in the second echelon on a front up to 400 km behind the Western Front. Without vehicles, they could not advance to the breakthrough areas in time.
The author writes: “The Soviet country was brought to the brink of collapse not by the power of the German divisions, not by the unprofessionalism of our soldiers and officers of 1941, but by treason, carefully prepared, thought out, planned. The betrayal, which was taken into account by the Germans … The enemy was helped by Russian officers and generals … Such a position in relation to the most difficult problem is a deep delusion of Pokrovsky and an obvious slander, discrediting the Red Army.
I would like to note the strange position in relation to the material of Pokrovsky newspaper "Krasnaya Zvezda", on the pages of which in three August issues an abridged version of the material "The Riddles of 1941" was published. Nobody takes away the right of a newspaper to publish such materials. But given the fact that the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper is an organ of the RF Ministry of Defense, one would expect a clear and well-grounded position in relation to such articles.
