1941 is one of the most mysterious moments in the history of our country. Mysterious not only for us, but also for the soldiers who passed through this year. The year is paradoxical. The heroism of the defenders of the Brest Fortress, border guards, and pilots who made several air rams on the very first day of the war are in sharp contrast to the surrender of the masses of the Red Army. What is the problem?
The contrasts of 1941 give rise to a wide variety of interpretations of what happened. Some say that the Stalinist repressions deprived the army of its normal command staff. Others - that the Soviet people did not want to defend the social system they hated. Still others are about the overwhelming superiority of the Germans in the ability to conduct hostilities. There are many judgments. And there is a famous phrase of Marshal Konev, who did not begin to describe the initial period of the war: “I don’t want to lie, but they will not be allowed to write the truth anyway”.
It is clear that few could write something even close to the truth. A private, major, colonel and even a combatant general do not see much. The whole picture is visible only from high headquarters. From the headquarters of the fronts, from Moscow. But again, we know that the front headquarters did not have a good command of the situation, and accordingly, inadequate information was received in Moscow.
Thus, neither Konev, nor Zhukov, nor even Stalin could tell the truth if he could write his memoirs. Even they did not have sufficient information.
But the truth can be CALCULATED with the inquisitive mind of a researcher asking the right questions. Unfortunately, few people try to ask the right questions, and the majority simply do not know how to put questions correctly. Once Sergei Ivanovich Vavilov defined an experiment as follows: "An experiment is a question clearly posed to nature, to which a completely unambiguous answer is expected: yes or no." A competently posed question always requires an answer in the form of YES or NO. Let us try to approach the problem of 1941 with questions in precisely this form.
Was the German army overwhelmingly stronger than the Red Army?
All the logic of general representations prompts the answer - it was. The Germans had the experience of several successful military campaigns in Europe. The Germans had an impeccably debugged mechanism of interaction between the combat arms. In particular, the interaction of aviation with the ground forces was specially practiced for 2.5 years in Spain by the Condor legion. Richthofen, who had this experience not yet fully appreciated in the literature for a wide range of readers, commanded the German aviation in the zone of our Southwestern Front in the summer of 1941.
But there is one BUT. It turns out that exactly those armies against which the enemy struck with deliberately superior forces, to which all the power of the blow fell, were precisely those who were not defeated. Moreover, they fought successfully for a long time, creating problems for the German offensive. This is the answer to the question.
Let's sketch out a diagram. On the front from the Baltic Sea to the Carpathians, the German offensive was parried by three fronts: Northwestern, Western and Southwestern. Starting from the Baltic coast, our armies were deployed in the following sequence (from north to south): 8th and 11th armies of the North-Western Front. Further, the 3rd, 10th, 4th armies of the Western Front, 5th, 6th, 26th and 12th armies of the Southwestern Front. The 13th Army of the Western Front was located behind the backs of the armies of the Western Front covering the border in the Minsk fortified area (UR).
On June 22, the blow of enemy tank wedges fell on the 8th and 11th armies, on the 4th army and on the 5th army. Let's see what happened to them.
The 8th Army found itself in the most difficult situation, which had to retreat through the hostile Baltic. However, her connections in July 1941 are found in Estonia. They retreat, take up defense, retreat again. The Germans beat this army, but did not crush it in the very first days. Nothing slips in the enemy's memoirs about the mass capture of the Red Army troops in the Baltic direction. And Liepaja, which was held for several days by the soldiers of the 8th Army and the Red Navy, could well claim the title of a hero city.
11th Army. On the first day of the war, even before all the orders for a counterattack, its 11th mechanized corps, almost the weakest in composition in the entire Red Army, armed with weak T-26s, attacks the advancing Germans, knocks them out of the border. In the attacks of the next two or three days, he loses almost all of his tanks. But it is precisely the counterattacks of the tanks of the 11th mechanized corps of the 11th Army of the North-Western Front that are marked in the history of the war as the battle of Grodno. Subsequently, the 11th Army retreats, trying to join the struggle to hold the cities. But this army fails to keep them. The retreat continues. The army is losing contact both with the front headquarters and with Moscow. For some time Moscow does not know whether this very 11th Army exists. But the army does exist. And, more or less understanding the operational situation, the army headquarters gropes for the enemy's weak spot - the weakly covered flanks of a tank wedge moving to Pskov. It attacks these flanks, cuts the road, and stops the enemy offensive for some days. Subsequently, the 11th Army is retained as a military formation. Participates in the winter 1941-42 offensive of the Red Army.
Thus, both armies of the North-Western Front, which fell under the crushing power of the first blow of the Germans, were neither crushed nor broken by this blow. And they continued to fight. And not without success. There is no information about any mass surrender of soldiers of these armies. The soldiers do not show their unwillingness to fight for the Soviet Motherland. The officers are quite competent in assessing the possibilities of conducting hostilities. Where to retreat, so as not to be bypassed, where to take up defenses, and where to inflict a dangerous counterattack.
4th Army of the Western Front. She came under attack from the enemy through Brest. Two divisions of this army, which neither the command of the Belarusian Military District, nor their own commander gave the order to leave the city for summer camps, were shot by German artillery right in the barracks in the city of Brest. The army, nevertheless, entered the battles, participated in the counterattack with the forces of the mechanized corps at its disposal, and retreated, clinging to the borders. One of the divisions of this army, having gone to the Mozyr UR on the old border, held it for a month. Scattered detachments of the encircled forces fought their way to this division, which remained far to the west. And here the headquarters of the defeated 3rd Army made its way. On the basis of this headquarters, numerous detachments of the encirclement and the only organized combat formation - the division of the 4th army, the 3rd army was recreated. A new one that replaced the disappeared one. However, the division itself by that time had already ceased to be a division of the 4th Army, but was reassigned to the 21st Army. But it is important for us to track her fate. After all, this is a division from among those that entered the battle on June 22 in the direction of the main attack. This division not only survived itself, but a larger military formation - the army - was revived on its base. Which will already have a long military destiny.
And what about the rest of the 4th army. Her story ends on July 24, 1941. But by no means because of the defeat and capture. Before disbanding, it conducts offensive battles in order to help the 13th Army to break out of the encirclement. Unsuccessfully. At night, the infantry of the 4th army knocks out the enemy from the towns and villages, and in the daytime they are forced to give up the same towns - in view of the enemy's tanks, artillery, and aviation. The front is not moving. But it is also impossible to make a breach for the encircled people. In the end, the four divisions available by this time in the 4th army are transferred to the 13th army, in which there is nothing else besides the command of the army and the command of one rifle corps. And the headquarters of the 4th Army, which remained without troops, becomes the headquarters of the new Central Front.
The troops of the army, which bore the brunt of the most powerful blow of the Germans through Brest, defended on one of the most important highways leading to Moscow - on the Varshavskoye Highway - were not just defeated and captured, but fought offensive battles in order to help the encircled troops. And these troops became an organized fighting nucleus, around which two armies were revived. And the headquarters of the army became the headquarters of a whole new front. Subsequently, the chief of staff of the 4th army Sandalov will actually lead the 20th most successful 20th army in the Moscow counteroffensive (commander Vlasov, who is not in the army during this period - is being treated for some kind of illness), will participate in the successful Pogorelo- Gorodishche operation in August 1942, in Operation Mars in November-December 1942 and beyond.
The 5th Army of the Southwestern Front received a blow at the junction with the 6th Army. And in fact, it had to retreat, turning the front to the south. The mechanized corps of this army took part in a counterattack in the Novograd-Volynsky area. At the front of this army, the Germans were forced to stop for a week on the Sluch River. Subsequently, when the breakthrough of the enemy's tank wedge to Kiev between the 5th and 6th armies became a reality, the 5th Army, whose front, facing south, stretched for 300 km, delivered a series of crushing blows to the flank of the Kiev wedge, intercepted the Kiev highway - and thereby stopped the attack on Kiev. The German tank division approached the Kiev fortified area, which literally had no one to defend, and stopped. It was left primitively without shells - because of the communications intercepted by the troops of the 5th Army.
The Germans were forced to deploy 11 divisions against the 5th Army, which had caught on to the Korosten fortified area on the old border. They had 190 divisions on the entire Soviet front. So, every 1/17 of the entire Wehrmacht was turned against the only 5th army at the same time when Soviet armies with numbers 19, 20, 21, … 37, 38 were arriving at the front from the depths of the country … the Germans were hit 150 times. The army troops secretly and quickly maneuvered in the Pripyat forests, appeared in unexpected places, smashed the enemy, and then they themselves escaped from the attacks of the Germans. Artillery was also successful. She, too, maneuvered covertly and delivered unexpected, very sensitive blows to concentrations of enemy troops, stations and convoys of vehicles supplying the enemy troops. There was ammunition. The fortification, which the army has caught on, is not only pillboxes, which, in essence, have lost their value in the conditions of mobile warfare. The fortification is, first of all, warehouses for weapons, ammunition, food, fuel, uniforms, and spare parts. The artillery of the 5th Army did not experience difficulties with shells. And consequently, the enemy had a very difficult time. Later, already in 1943-44, during the offensive operations of the Red Army, it was revealed that 2/3 of the corpses of German soldiers had traces of destruction by artillery fire. So they were the soldiers in the trenches. And the artillery of the 5th Army, acting according to the data of the reconnaissance and sabotage groups, struck at the concentration of troops.
Accordingly, in the directives of the German command, the destruction of the 5th Army was set as a task equal in importance to the capture of Leningrad, the occupation of Donbass. It was the 5th Army, which took the battle on June 22, that became the reason for the so-called. the Pripyat crisis, which forced the Germans to stop the offensive on Moscow and turn Guderian's tank group to the south - against the Kiev group. This army inflicted crushing blows on communications even when the Germans launched a large-scale offensive against it - after August 5. With this German offensive itself, an anecdote came out. It started on August 5 instead of August 4 for a curious reason. A reconnaissance and sabotage group of the 5th Army intercepted a package with a German directive to start the offensive. The directive did not reach the troops.
The army was not defeated. She melted away in battles. Commander-5, General Potapov, asked the front for marching reinforcements - and practically did not receive them. And the army continued to torment 11 full-fledged German divisions with unexpected and successful strikes, remaining on a 300-kilometer front with only 2,400 active bayonets.
Remark. The staff of the German infantry division was 14 thousand people. 11 divisions are 150 thousand. And they are held by the army, which, in terms of the number of active bayonets, is 20 (!) Times inferior to the regular strength of these troops. Digest this figure. The army, which is 20 times inferior in the number of bayonets to the opposing enemy, is conducting offensive battles, which become a headache for the German General Staff.
So. The armies that suffered the brunt of the blow of the German army were not defeated by this blow. Moreover, they demonstrated survivability, activity and the ability to competently retreat, and then also smash a much superior enemy. - Not by number, but by skill
In addition to the 5th Army of the Southwestern Front, it should be noted the actions of not the whole army, but the right-flank 99th Red Banner Division of the 26th Army near Przemysl. This division successfully fought with two or even three German divisions advancing in this place. Threw them across the San River. And the Germans could not do anything about it. Despite the might of the blow, despite all the German organization and air superiority, no offensive was carried out against other divisions of this army in the first days of the war.
The main question of the paragraph was answered by large military formations: armies and divisions that bore the brunt of the blow. The answer is NO. The Wehrmacht did not have a qualitative advantage over Soviet soldiers and commanders.
And after this answer, the paradox of the 1941 catastrophe becomes much more serious. If the troops, on which the power of the German offensive was brought down, fought successfully, then where did the millions of prisoners come from? Where did the loss of thousands of tanks and planes and gigantic territories come from?
Did the 12th Army fight?
What about the other armies? - Those that were not hit. Either he was relatively weak.
Let's start with the most interesting army to clarify the situation - the 12th army of General Ponedelin. This army occupied the front from the Polish border in the south of the Lvov region, with two divisions of the 13th rifle corps covered the Carpathian passes on the border with Hungary, which did not enter the war on June 22. Further, the corps of this army were located along the border with Romania to Bukovina.
On June 22, the troops of this army were alerted, received weapons and ammunition, and took up positions. When troops moved to combat positions, they were bombed. Aviation subordinated to the command of the 12th Army on June 22 did not take to the air. She was not given the order to take off into the air, bomb someone or, on the contrary, cover her own troops from the air. The army commander and headquarters did not give the order. The commander and headquarters of the 13th rifle corps, parts of which were exposed to enemy aviation. Nevertheless, after reaching the position, the troops were not attacked by anyone. According to the border guards of the three border detachments who guarded the border south of Przemysl and further along the Carpathians - until June 26 inclusively, the enemy did not attempt an offensive on this huge multi-hundred-kilometer front. Neither against the 13th Rifle Corps, nor against the left-flank divisions of the neighboring 26th Army.
On the Internet, letters were posted from the front of the artillery officer Inozemtsev, who on June 22, as part of the artillery battery of the 192 rifle division, entered positions, and two days later they were forced to withdraw because they could be bypassed. So they explained to the fighters. In 2 days it is June 24th. There was no order from the headquarters of the Southwestern Front for the withdrawal of the 12th Army. There was an order from the corps headquarters.
The border guards, who were removed from the outpost at Veretsky Pass by order of the headquarters of the rifle corps, also confirm that there was a written order.
There is one more recollection of an officer of the railway brigade who interacted with the 13th rifle corps. The book "Steel stretches". The brigade served the railways in the south of the Lviv region. Sambir, Stryi, Turka, Drohobych, Borislav. On the morning of June 25, a group of railway explosives arrived at the location of the headquarters of the 192 rifle division to receive orders on what to blow up, and did not find the headquarters. Found rifle units completing their withdrawal from their previously occupied positions.
It all fits together. Three confirming evidence of the abandonment by the 13th rifle corps of the 12th army of positions on the border with Hungary on the evening of June 24 - on the morning of June 25. Without minimal enemy pressure. And without an order from the front headquarters. In the combat report of 12 armies, which are also posted on the Web, -
On June 25, Army Commander Ponedelin informs the front headquarters that the position of the troops of the 13th brigade is unknown to the army headquarters. On the flank of the Southwestern Front, completely untouched by the war, the army commander does not know what is happening in his right-flank corps - which is 2-3 hours away from the army headquarters by car, with which there is communication even through the civilian telephone network that has not yet been damaged.
Meanwhile, the border guards of the outpost that covered the Veretsky Pass receive permission to return to the outpost. And they find the Germans on the road that descends from the pass. In his memoirs, the border guard describes how their outpost drove the Germans off the road and from the pass. But the very fact of the advancement of the Germans along the pass, from which the border guards were removed by the order of the corps commander-13, is present. Moreover, the nomination from the territory of Hungary, which by this time had not yet entered the war.
In the meantime, there are interesting details in the memoirs of the railway workers. The orders they received at the headquarters of the rifle division to blow up structures were somehow strange. Instead of important objects, they were ordered to destroy dead-end branches and some insignificant communication line. And on June 25, the quartermaster ran up to them with a request to help destroy an army warehouse of aviation gasoline. He was given a verbal order to destroy the warehouse, but he, the quartermaster, simply did not have the means of destruction. And if the warehouse remains to the enemy, he will shoot himself a bullet in the temple. The railroad workers, having received a receipt from the intendant, destroyed this warehouse. And how many other military depots were left without noise?
In the following days, when the railway explosives destroyed everything they could reach, the Germans dropped leaflets with threats of reprisals - precisely because they destroyed everything. The Germans, it seems, were very much counting on the contents of the warehouses, which were quietly left to them by Corps Commander-13 Kirillov and Commander-12 Ponedelin.
But the most interesting thing is further. The order of the headquarters of the Southwestern Front for the withdrawal of the 12th and 26th armies was received. It was worked out at the front headquarters at 21 o'clock on the evening of 26 June. And later it was declared unfounded. Due to the fact that the troops of the left-flank divisions of the 26th army and the right-flank 13th brigade of the 12th army were not subjected to pressure. The front headquarters hastened. But at the same time, he indicated to the 13th Rifle Corps exactly those lines of withdrawal, to which the corps had withdrawn at its own discretion on June 24-25.
We have a completely clear fact of betrayal, to which we are involved
1) Divisional Commander-192, who gave orders for the destruction of insignificant objects, but left the warehouses not blown up;
2) Corps Commander-13 Kirillov, who signed an order on the withdrawal of troops from positions and on the removal of border guards from the Veretsky Pass (while the outposts in the wilderness between the passes were not removed);
3) commander-12 Ponedelin and his headquarters, which for 2 days "did not know" where the troops of the 13th corps; 4) the leadership of the Southwestern Front, consisting of the front commander Kirponos, the chief of staff Purkaev and a member of the Front Military Council Nikishev, without the signature of each of which the order of June 26, recognized as unfounded, was invalid.
The further fate of the 12th Army
At the end of June, she receives an order from the front headquarters to retreat to the old state border, gradually turns to the east, starting with the 13th rifle corps. It does not enter into combat contact with the enemy, except for some minor clashes between the rearguards and motorcyclists. The aviation of this army is preserved. At least until July 17 - in contrast to the fighting armies, which by that time had long forgotten what a red-star air force overhead was.
And this 12th army, exhausted by the order of the fast march from Western Ukraine, having lost the material part of the mechanized corps attached to it, turned into a foot corps during the march, occupies positions on the old border. And only here, on July 16-17, the enemy begins to put pressure on her. And the infantry. The German infantry breaks through the Letychiv fortified area, about the insufficient armament of which Ponedelin reports to his higher authorities just before the breakthrough. Although he stood this UR without the influence of the enemy for a full week.
The same young artillery officer Inozemtsev from 192 divisions in a letter to his relatives from the front reports that he finally reached positions on the old state border on July 9, where they will certainly give the Germans a battle.
So that's it. The Germans are breaking through the Letichevsky UR, and who do you think is responsible for the defense in the area of the breakthrough? - the commander of the 13th rifle corps, Zakharov, noted by us. Commander Ponedelin responds to the breakthrough with a formidable battle order to strike at the enemy who has broken through. The next day, the order is repeated. He appoints an offensive at 7 a.m. after the bombing of the enemy by aviation, allocates such and such formations for the offensive. And the very unit, which was supposed to be in offensive battles from 7 in the morning near the border, tens of kilometers from the army headquarters, at 17 in the afternoon of the offensive, Ponedelin sees next to his headquarters in Vinnitsa. This is noted in the documents of the 12th Army. Those. the order was written for the report, and no one was going to move the troops anywhere.
After that, the troops of the 12th army begin to very successfully fight to hold the bridge across the Southern Bug, along which the army of Ponedelin and the neighboring 6th army of Muzychenko escape the threat of encirclement from the fortified areas on the old state border. From the rugged Podolsk Upland filled with wooded beams, from the zone of warehouses of property, food, ammunition, fuel, weapons that can be used to fight for at least a month (in the image and likeness of the 5th Army), into the bare steppe. After Muzychenko was wounded, two armies are under the general command of Ponedelin. And in marching columns across the bare steppe they come to the Uman cauldron. Where on August 7 they are captured. Led by Ponedelny and commander Kirillov.
However, not all were captured. Our acquaintance, the artilleryman Inozemtsev, at this time finds himself on the left bank of the Dnieper. And letters from him go to relatives right up to 1943. The Chief of Staff of the 12th Army and the Chief of Aviation of the 12th Army are not captured. Tens of thousands of soldiers are taken prisoner, who were not allowed to fight, but literally taken prisoner, i.e. drove into conditions in which it was hopeless to fight.
The 12th army did not actually fight. And she did not fight, not because the soldiers or officers did not want to, but because her own command, which committed treason, did not allow her to fight. Irrefutable evidence of which I was lucky to unearth and combine into a coherent picture.
Did the mechanized corps fight?
Before dealing with the fate of other armies, let us ask ourselves what happened to the tanks of numerous mechanized corps.
What were they doing? In principle, we know from history about a gigantic tank battle in Western Ukraine, in which tanks were actually lost. But still, since we have identified oddities in the behavior of an entire army, oddities in the orders of the headquarters of the Southwestern Front, let's see if everything is not going smoothly here either. As we know, the 5th Army has shown itself to be extremely brilliant. It included two mechanized corps, the 9th and the 19th. One of these corps was commanded by the future Marshal Rokossovsky, who in all his front lines proved both loyalty to the Motherland and the ability to fight competently. Rokossovsky is also noted for the fact that he did not bring anything from defeated Germany except his own suitcase. Not involved in looting. Therefore, we will not look closely at what is happening in the corps of the 5th Army. Apparently, they honestly performed their duty, despite the difficulties and confusion.
But with the corps belonging to the 6th and 26th armies it would be necessary to deal with it. What did we have in the Lviv region? There were the 15th and 4 mechanized corps of the 6th army and there was 8 microns, subordinate to the 26th army. 4th mechanized corps.
The first strangeness of the events associated with the use of these corps lies in the fact that already in the middle of the day on June 22, the 26th army, which is leading serious battles in the Przemysl region, is taken 8 microns, reassigned to the front headquarters and sent away both from the front and from its own supply bases and spare parts warehouses located in Drohobych and Stryi. First, the building under its own power comes to the Lviv region, then it is redirected to Brody in the east of the Lviv region. With a daily delay, against the order of the front headquarters, he is concentrating in the Brody area for an offensive in the direction of Berestechko. And finally, on the morning of June 27, it begins to advance towards Soviet territory. As noted in the combat report of the headquarters of the Southwestern Front from 12 noon on June 27, the advancing 8 microns did not meet the enemy by that moment. In the same direction, in interaction with it, 15 microns also advance. On Soviet territory, far from the border. And there is no enemy in front of them.
Meanwhile, the front's reconnaissance, as early as June 25, revealed the accumulation of enemy mechanized forces north of Przemysl, i.e. north of the beautifully fighting 99 Red Banner Division, which beat the superior forces of the enemy. On June 26, these mechanized forces break through the front of the left-flank division of the 6th Army, then cut the Stryi-Lvov railway and find themselves on the outskirts of Lvov - at the Sknilov station.
What's not normal here?
It is not normal that the distance from the main location of 8 microns in the city of Drohobych to the line of the German strike southwest of Lvov is less than 50 km. If he was in his place, he could easily parry a German blow. And thus provide the open flank of the 26th Army. Those. prevent the capture of Lvov, while acting in the interests of their own army. After the breakthrough occurred, Army Commander-26 Kostenko had to compete with infantry in speed with the mechanized forces of the Germans, who bypassed his army from the north. His tanks 8 microns were desperately needed to cover his own flank.
But the corps was taken away already a couple of hundred kilometers to the east of the Lviv region, and even gave the order to advance towards the Rivne region. Further east. Moreover, there is no reaction of the headquarters of the Southwestern Front to information from its own intelligence about the concentration of the enemy's mechanized forces.
And Lvov, which ended up being abandoned as a result, is a place of concentration of gigantic warehouses of all kinds of military equipment, the same spare parts. There were two base storage points Lviv and Stryi on the territory of the Lviv region. Moreover, in Lviv itself, which is the old city, it is inconvenient to place warehouses. In 1970-80s Lvov, the main warehouse center of the city was Sknilov station, which I have already mentioned. It was here that the Germans broke through on 26 June. They did not need Lvov, but Sknilov with gigantic reserves of everything and everything for the entire 6th Army and for its two tank corps: the 4th and 15th.
And where is the 4th mechanized corps of the future hero of the defense of Kiev, the future creator of the ROA Vlasov? You will not believe. In the direction of the German attack from the area north of Przemysl towards Sknilov. In the forests southwest of Lviv. The Germans walk past Vlasov's corps as if it did not exist. And Vlasov himself on the evening of June 26 receives an order from the front headquarters to retreat towards the Ternopil region. One of the two most powerful corps in the Red Army with a thousand tanks, with the best provision of vehicles in the Red Army, does not react in any way to the breakthrough of the Germans to Sknilov, but not only does not react himself! The fact that God himself ordered him to defeat the advancing German mechanized units is not remembered by the headquarters of the South-Western Front, which actually assigned Vlasov a place of concentration in the forests south-west of Lvov. This is according to the front headquarters' own documents! Instead of a combat order to crush the enemy to the corps, which in the first days of the war had already uselessly wound more than 300 km on the tracks of tanks (while spending the motor resources of the equipment), an order is given for a new long-distance march, separated from the spare parts base in the very Lviv, which he should have protect. Neither the front headquarters nor Vlasov himself have any thoughts that this is wrong.
There is, however, one person who sounds the alarm. Chief of the armored forces of the Southwestern Front, Major General Morgunov, who writes reports on the inadmissibility of continuous marches of mechanized corps. He writes on June 29 about the loss of already 30% of the equipment abandoned due to breakdowns and the lack of time and spare parts for tankers to repair them. Morgunov demands to stop the hulls, let them at least inspect and adjust the technique. But the mechanized corps are not allowed to stop. And already on July 8 they are withdrawn to the reserve - as having lost their combat capability due to the loss of materiel. As we remember, the mechanized corps from the 12th Army by the time it reached the old border was on foot - without any fighting at all.
There are no complaints about the commanders of the 8th and 15th mechanized corps. They eventually got to the enemy, the battle of the Soviet mechanized corps with the advancing Germans near Dubno was. The 8th mechanized corps was noted for its actions. The problem with the incomparably more powerful 4th mechanized corps of Vlasov, the problem with the command of the 6th army, the problem with the front command.
Ultimately, we are forced to state. The mechanized corps mostly did not fight. They were deprived of the opportunity to act where they could change the course of events, and were driven by marches along the roads until the motor resources of the equipment were exhausted. Moreover, despite the documented protests of the head of the front's armored forces.
Continuation
