Continuation, start here
Were the directives of Moscow being fulfilled?
The 3rd and 10th armies of the Western Front, located in the Bialystok salient, were famous for the very first large capture of Soviet troops. Here, as part of the 10th army, the most powerful in terms of the number and quality of tanks was located, the 6th mechanized corps of General Khatskilevich was excellently provided with vehicles. The armies were located in the border fortified areas, in particular, the 10th army relied on the Osovets SD. In 1915, Russian troops in the Osovets fortress glorified themselves with a long-term heroic defense. As if history itself appealed to the retention of this place.
And the main blows of the Germans passed by these armies. Panzer group Guderian moved through Brest and the location of the 4th army, Panzer group Gotha moved through the location of the 11th army to Vilnius with a turn to Minsk. On June 25, when the 4th Army failed to stop the enemy near Slutsk, the interception of the road from the Belostotsky ledge to the east through Baranovichi became a reality. Exactly on this day, the 3rd and 10th armies receive a PERMISSION from the command of the Western Front to exit the fortified areas and retreat to the east. Exactly when it is too late to retreat. West of Minsk, these armies, most of whose troops were moving in marching columns, are intercepted. Are subjected to the most severe defeat by aviation and artillery on the roads in marching columns. And it is here that the situation of the first mass capture of Soviet troops arises.
Meanwhile, until June 25, there were still 22, 23 and 24 June. In the afternoon of June 22, directive No. 3 was sent from Moscow to the front headquarters, which ordered the mechanized forces to deliver concentrated strikes against the enemy in the adjacent territory and capture the cities of Suwalki and Lublin.
Lublin was about 80 km from the locations of the 4th and 15 mechanized corps of the strongest 6th army of the Southwestern Front. Not God knows what, the tanks of mechanized corps were driven over much greater distances in other directions. Still, 80 km is not too little. But with Suwalki everything is much more interesting.
Suwalki is a dead-end railway station in the swampy, wooded bear corner of northeastern Poland. The Suwalki area wedged into the territory of the USSR to the north of the Bialystok salient. And the railway went to Suwalki, the only one along which it was possible to supply the tank wedge of Goth. From the border and from the locations of the 3rd army to the railway to Suwalki along the inter-lake defile - only 20 km. On the road from Augustow - 26 km. The long-range artillery of the 3rd Army was able to support its own advancing troops up to the cutting of this railway, without moving from its territory. Conventional artillery, without moving away from the warehouses, could provide support for the offensive until the middle of this path. The shells necessary for powerful artillery support of the offensive do not need to be carried far. They are here - in the warehouses of the fortified area. And we remember that the reserves on which the 5th Army relied in the Korosten UR were sufficient for more than a month's effective fight against the enemy.
A strike by the 3rd Army, supported by a mechanized corps in the direction of the railway, made the position of the 3rd Panzer Group of Hoth on Soviet territory hopeless. No fuel, no shells, no food.
And there was this order to strike at Suwalki. A specific order with a precisely specified target of the strike. And even with a clearly defined meaning. The enemy, who threw his troops into a deep breakthrough, substituted his rear. On which it is necessary to strike. This is a directive formulation that is not open to any other interpretation. The troops, having thrown all their forces forward, themselves exposed their rear to defeat.
Meanwhile, the command of the Western Front, headed by Pavlov and the chief of staff of the Klimovskys, instead of fulfilling the instructions of the directive, decides to advance not across the border to the railway, which is 20 km away, but to move the 6th Mechanized Corps and cavalry along its territory towards Grodno, which is significant further, and tanks obviously could not be provided with fuel on this route with the help of available refueling equipment.
Just note right away. What is written about the attack on Grodno cannot be taken as a fact. So it is written about him. The Germans did not record the strike itself. Their reconnaissance did not find large tank forces on the Belostotsky ledge. The road littered with broken Soviet equipment did not go northeast to Grodno. And to the east - to Slonim. But this is another question.
So far, it is important for us that the completely realistic target of the short strike - Suwalki - as a result of the strike on which the Hoth Panzer Group remained on foreign soil without supplies - was ignored by the headquarters of the Western Front without justification of such ignorance. The mobile troops were ordered to move through their territory. In the event of a strike in the direction of the railway to Suwalki, the 3rd Army did not break away from its supply base in the Osovetsky UR, making the financial situation of one of the largest advancing enemy groupings hopeless. Instead, mobile units are sent to travel through their territory in isolation from the combined arms army, from the supply base.
There are mistakes. But there are no identical mistakes on two fronts. The South-Western Front, exactly on the same day, as we remember, sends the mechanized corps to wind hundreds of kilometers on tracks. He ignores the directive providing for an attack on Lublin. Instead, they organize an attack on their territory at Berestechko-Dubna. Moreover, as it was noted, on June 27, the mechanized corps advances against the enemy which it does not see. He simply is not in front of him. Although it should have been at least a day. The mechanized corps was late in concentrating on the line of the attack for a day. Painfully far I had to drag myself.
Note that Zhukov, who arrived from Moscow, is involved in this decision to change the task of striking on the Southwestern Front.
Maybe the directive was such an obvious gamble that the front commanders and personally the chief of the General Staff Zhukov considered it possible to ignore it? But no. The German chief of staff Halder noted in his diary that the actions in the south were unsuccessful (we already know about the failure of the superior forces of the Germans near Przemysl, where the 99th Red Banner Division successfully knocked them out of Soviet territory), it would be necessary to provide assistance, but as luck would have it, not a single one there is no reserve infantry division, and a small tank reserve cannot be sent to help due to the disgusting quality of the roads in Eastern Poland, which, among other things, are clogged with carts.
The Germans have no reserves. And all the roads on the other side of the border are packed with carts supplying the formations thrown forward. A Soviet mechanized corps that crossed the border would not have in front of itself any forces capable of stopping it - and would only crush with caterpillars, shoot and seize material resources, without which the German troops thrown into Soviet territory would be helpless. We already know that German tanks stopped in front of Kiev, then unprotected by Soviet troops, due to the cessation of combat supplies due to the attacks of Potapov's 5th army.
But directive No. 3 of June 22 was not carried out by the command of the two most important fronts - Western and South-Western, and by the Chief of the General Staff of the Red Army Zhukov, who made the decision to counterstrike together with the command of the South-West front.
Throwing the Germans headlong forward - with the roads in the rear unsuitable, in the absence of reserves to cover vital rear communications - was, from the point of view of the military capabilities of only the border Soviet armies, an adventure. From the very beginning.
But he was not a gamble. For the Germans knew that they were allowed any stupidity. Allowed by the conspiracy of a part of the generals of the Red Army, which will not carry out orders from Moscow. Which will destroy the combat capabilities of its own troops - for example, by destroying the service life of tanks in senseless multi-hundred-kilometer marches.
A little remark
The service life of the Tiger tank was only 60 km. The first use of the tank near Leningrad in the second half of 1942 was unsuccessful because most of the tanks simply did not reach the battlefield from the unloading station.
The tanks of the Soviet mechanized corps of the Southwestern Front in June and early July 1941 covered 1200-1400 kilometers on their own. The orders did not leave time for inspecting the tank and finding out that the tank stopped because of a loose nut that had to be put in its place. But before that, for several hours to open hatches, fumble in iron, look …
Well, when the "clattering armor, shining brilliance of steel" corps were gone, it was the turn of the infantry. She, too, was torn away from the supply bases, and was taken out on the roads in marching columns. Where she was captured by the now superior in mobility and armament mechanized formations of the enemy.
But to understand this, our historians and analysts lack primitiveness: admitting that the generals of the two fronts grossly violated discipline - they did not follow the direct instruction of the country's top military leadership - directive No. 3. And the enemy, adventurously substituting his rear for a natural, completely logical blow, the order for which was issued and sent to the headquarters of the fronts, knew that this blow would not happen. I knew that the front headquarters would not obey the order.
Not mediocre, but exceptionally competently they will not do it. They will take away the 8th mechanized corps from the honest commander-26, General Kostenko, who, only out of the interests of the army entrusted to him under the command, would not have allowed Lvov to take Lvov with a short and powerful blow from the mechanized corps on the enemy troops threatening his flank. And then the wooded Lviv region with two large warehouse centers in Lviv and in Strya, based on the difficult to overcome Carpathians from the south, on fortified areas along the border, hanging over the supply routes of the Germans through Lublin and along the highway to Kiev, would turn into a second thorn on a scale of 5- oh army. Even with complete isolation. And even more essential. In the Carpathians, it is not the Ukrainian nationalists of Westernism, but the friendly Ruthenian people. Behind the Carpathians is the territory that belonged to Hungary, but is historically connected with Slovakia. And Slovaks are not Czechs. Slovaks are the Slovak National Uprising of 1944. Slovaks are requests to join the USSR in the 60s. This is Colonel Ludwig Svoboda, the commander of the Czechoslovak brigade, which together with the Red Army took the Carpathian passes in 1944. The Slovak units allied to the Germans, unlike the Romanians and Hungarians, did not leave a bad memory on Soviet territory.
But that's not all. For information: in the south of the Lviv region there is an oil-bearing region. Romania provided production of 7 million tons of oil per year. Lviv region gave Hitler 4 million tons. Every third ton of the oil on which the engines of the Reich worked! The quick withdrawal of the Red Army from the Lviv region did not significantly destroy the infrastructure of the region. - We didn't have time. Oil production was quickly established. For the sake of oil, the Germans here did not even kill the Jews, in whose hands were the management of the oil fields.
Briefly speaking. There was an alternative to the catastrophe of 1941. Real. It was not just in itself as an opportunity, which was understood by strong hindsight descendants. It was understood and expressed with specific instructions on what to do - in the form of Stalin's Directive No. 3 of June 22, 1941. In the middle of the first day of the war, the question of the complete and unconditional defeat of the aggressor was actually resolved. "With a little blood, a mighty blow." Or at least - about depriving him of the opportunity to wage a long war.
And this unique opportunity was killed by the headquarters of the two main fronts - Western and South-Western. There were a lot of people in the headquarters. But in each of them there were three people, without the signature of each of whom not a single headquarters order had legal force: commander, chief of staff, member of the Military Council. On the Southwestern Front, Purkaev was the chief of staff, and Nikishev was a member of the Military Council. During the period when Purkaev was in command of the Kalinin Front, the problem of hunger arose in the armies of the front. Several dozen starvation deaths. A commission arrived, Purkaev was dismissed, it turned out that there was enough food for the front, but there was a problem of distribution. After the removal of Purkaev, this problem resolved. There is such an episode.
Directive # 3 - a probe with which we manage to penetrate the ins and outs of the 1941 disaster. The principles of the organization of the army do not allow non-compliance with the directive of the higher command. Even if it seems to you that you understand the situation better. Even if you think the decision of your superiors is stupid. They are the bosses. And who knows, maybe a stupid order isn't really stupid. You are sacrificed for the sake of a plan that is unknown to you. People should perish, carrying out a deliberately impracticable order, because an operation is being implemented a thousand kilometers away from them, for the sake of which it really makes sense to die in a seemingly senseless distracting operation. War is cruel.
On the Western and Southwestern Fronts, the two front headquarters simultaneously canceled the meaning of the directives of the higher command, changed the goals and the very directions of the counterattack. Contrary to military discipline. Contrary to strategy, contrary to common sense. At the same time, the subordination of the troops was changed. On the South-Western Front, 8 microns were removed from the subordination of the 26th army. On the Western Front, 6 microns of the 10th army were withdrawn from the subordination of this very 10th army. And, by the way, they were also driven along the roads of Belarus. The commander of the 7th Panzer Division of this corps will report in a subsequent report that the corps was thrown by orders from the front headquarters without a clear target from direction to direction. They never met an enemy who deserved action against him by the corps. But on the other hand, they overcame the anti-tank lines prepared by the Germans on our territory 4 times. As you can see, the handwriting is well recognized.
By the way, the death surrounded by the 13th Army is also curious. She is taken out of the Minsk UR - to the Lida area - by order of the front headquarters. And the arriving troops of the Second Strategic Echelon primitively do not have time to take positions in the Minsk UR. The 13th Army itself was sent deep into the future cauldron from its positions near the important political and industrial center of the city of Minsk - in conditions when there is already a threat from the northern flank. The directive of the front headquarters for the withdrawal of the army near Lida directly refers to the provision against the threat from Vilnius. But the army is not being withdrawn to the Vilnius-Minsk highway, but is being taken far to the west - to the space between the supply bases of the fortified areas of the old and new state borders. Going nowhere. Into the woods. The army is dying for nothing. Subsequently, the army with the same number is recreated on the basis of the 4th army divisions again.
And to defend Minsk, freshly arrived troops rushed into the empty fortified area, which did not even have time to occupy the fortified area. Goth's tanks were moving too quickly through Vilnius from the north. Soviet divisions entered the battle on the move. There could be no question of establishing interaction with the forces of the fortified area, or of any normal use of stocks of funds in the warehouses of the UR.
Well, and a very small touch to the picture of the conspiracy in the Red Army. Among the recollections of the soldiers, evidence caught the eye. The soldiers arrived at the front near Polotsk. On the outskirts of a village they had breakfast in the morning. Lieutenant Bardeen, whom the soldiers knew, built them without weapons (the weapons remained in the pyramids) and took them to the village. The Germans were already there. Bardeen halted the formation and informed the soldiers that the war was over for them. Like this.
Vlasov.
In the described episodes, the figure of General Vlasov was drawn, through the positions of the mechanized corps of which the Germans broke through to the outskirts of Lvov. Not bothering yourself too much.
And the last episode of the military biography of Vlasov as part of the Red Army is the command of the 2nd shock army of the Volkhov Front. It is known that the army found itself in a difficult situation and perished. And Vlasov gave up. But it is almost unknown that the army died due to Vlasov's failure to comply with the order of the General Staff. The General Staff realized that the offensive of the army was drowning, now it was in a dangerous position. And they ordered Vlasov to withdraw the army to safe lines. The withdrawal of troops was ordered to be carried out before May 15, 1942. Vlasov referred to the poor condition of the roads, the occupation of these roads by a cavalry unit. And he announced the date when he could begin the withdrawal of the army - May 23. The German offensive began on 22 May. The army was trapped in full force.
If you do not look closely at the events of the first days of the war near Lvov, then one could consider this a fatal coincidence of circumstances, and Vlasov - a person who in 1942 had a revolution in his worldview due to Stalin's mistakes made in the first year of the war. But there were events near Lvov. Vlasov is directly involved in them. Both roads along which the Germans could reach Sknilov passed literally along the edge of the forest where the 31st Panzer Division of his corps was waiting for an order. The rest of the corps troops were also not far away. They directly covered the direction along which the enemy mechanized forces broke through, occupying the eastern bank of the Vereshitsa River.
We can definitely conclude that Vlasov in 1941 was an important participant in the military conspiracy. Moreover, the subsequent fate of Vlasov as the creator of the ROA itself becomes evidence of the collusion with the Germans of those who led the headquarters of at least two fronts and individual armies of these fronts in 1941.
But this can only be understood by carefully studying the series of events in the initial period of the war.
And you should definitely see behind the "games of soldiers" - the most important result of these games. Troops were withdrawn from the areas of concentration of gigantic material reserves in warehouses in both the new and the old state borders. The conspirators deprived the Red Army of the means of warfare accumulated over several years of the work of the defense industry.
And vice versa, they supplied the enemy with these means. Gasoline, shells for the guns left by the Germans, aerial bombs, food, spare parts for equipment that were thrown because of minor breakdowns, medicines, explosives, wires, rails, sleepers, tires for cars, fodder for horses. An interesting detail. Preparing for war with the USSR, the Germans reduced orders for the production of ammunition. They definitely knew that the Red Army would soon be faced with a shortage of shells.
Vyazemsky boiler
I'm not ready to talk about every issue of 1941 today. Not everything is feasible. It is difficult to talk about what happened near Kiev.
But we managed to clarify a lot of important things about the Vyazemsky boiler.
For me, the most surprising fact was the deployment of ten divisions of the Moscow people's militia (DNO) - strictly against the direction of the main attacks of the Germans in Operation Typhoon. Five cadre armies of the Reserve Front in the middle. And on the obvious directions of a possible enemy offensive - along the main highways - just with a militia division.
The militias are put on the most dangerous areas. Well, just by logic: among the deaf Smolensk-Vyazma forests there are two highways. Minsk and Varshavskoe. Well, not through forests and swamps to make their way to the advancing Germans. - Along the roads. And on both roads, 10 divisions of the Moscow people's militia were the first to meet the strike of Operation Typhoon. Most of the divisions of the people's militia arrived at the front on 20 September. Literally 10 days before the start of the German offensive. And we got the sectors of the front, the enemy strike on which is most likely.
Provided beyond their heads with everything that the servicemen could lack, the 5 armies of the Reserve Front disappeared as a result of Operation Typhoon - as they never happened.
And the Moscow militias do not disappear. The defeated 8th DNO - is drawn on October 16 at the Borodino field. Later, the fighter of this DNO Emmanuil Kozakevich became the author of the notorious story "STAR", based on which the film of the same name was shot.
Three DNOs of the southern direction of the breakthrough of the Germans one way or another overtake the Germans - and stop them in Naro-Fominsk, near Tarutino, near Belev.
It is more difficult in the northern section. The 2nd DNO, at the cost of heavy losses, breaks through the encirclement of the Reserve Front near the village of Bogoroditskoye. And with surprise he discovers that the armies of the front do not want to leave the encirclement through the prepared passage, pierced by thousands of surrendered lives. The bloodless 2nd DNO was disbanded in December 1941.
Another Moscow DNO, after a long retreat, after leaving the encirclement, took up defensive positions on Pyatnitskoe highway between Panfilov's and Beloborodov's divisions. It became the 11th Guards Division. Panfilov's division became the 8th Guards. The division of the Moscow people's militia, thrown into battle without preparation, became the 11th Guards.
And five - not divisions, but armies of the Reserve Front, did not show themselves especially in military terms, and at the same time provided the Germans with hundreds of thousands of prisoners. How can this be?
There are recollections of the division commander of the 2nd division of the people's militia that on the first day of the German offensive he received an order from the command of the army to which he was subordinate to retreat. Following this, liaison officers from the 19th Army of General Lukin arrived to him - and gave the order not to retreat, but to take such and such a line of defense - and to ensure the passage through the positions of the division of this army. The paradox of the situation is that the division commander carried out exactly this order. - Order of another army commander. Why?
And the division struck the corridor from the Vyazemsky cauldron, also on the orders of Lukin. But the surrender of the army took place after the injury of Lukin.
About the 19th Army itself, it is known that just before its transfer to the command of Lukin, former army commander Konev compiled a long list of army headquarters officers whom he suspected of betrayal. And there is the memoir of a military doctor who watched as Lukin lined up about 300 officers of the army headquarters and called in volunteers to command three breakthrough companies. There were no volunteers. The company commanders were appointed by Lukin. However, they did not cope with the task of breaking through.
It seems that fragments of the terrible truth of the initial period of the war have surfaced. The vastness of the officers' conspiracy was so significant that honest officers and generals had to take it into account constantly. And, it seems, use the methods of identifying "friends".
But that's another question. Important. And extremely relevant for today's Russia.
Output
The main thing is that there was a conspiracy, the most important episodes of which and the style of implementation of which we identified. The information that made it possible to calculate it surfaced. And they managed to catch a glance. Identify contradictions and patterns in the chaos of what was happening.
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. Treason, which was taken into account by the Germans in the development of completely adventurous, if judged objectively, plans for the offensive.
The Great Patriotic War was not a fight between Russians and Germans, or even Russians with Europeans. The enemy was assisted by Russian officers and generals. It was not a clash between imperialism and socialism. The enemy was assisted by generals and officers, who were raised to the top by the Soviet regime. She was not a clash of professionalism and stupidity. Helped were officers and generals, who were considered the best, who, according to the results of their service in peacetime, were elevated to the elite of the Red Army. Conversely, where the officers and generals of the Red Army did not betray, the German military genius showed his own helplessness. The 5th Army of the South-Western Front is the clearest example of this. And then there were Tula, Voronezh, Stalingrad. It is difficult to wash Stalingrad out of history. There was the hero-city of Tula, which was hit by the workers of the Tula factories as part of the Workers' Regiment and the Tula, the militarized guards of the factories, as part of the NKVD regiment. There is no parade in Tula in 2010. They don't like Tula.
And they don't like Voronezh either. Although Voronezh is in the defensive phase - it was the second Stalingrad.
After the discovery of the problem of treason in 1941, the question of who fought with whom becomes much more urgent than it seems until now. And this is an internal question. Who fought with whom in our own country? He fought in such a way that the craters from that war are not equal to this day. And mental wounds - do they harass not only veterans, but also their grandchildren? - In contrast to the no less brutal in the events at the front - the First World War, which for Russia is “forgotten”. The Great Patriotic War turned out to be more terrible, but more meaningful
This has to be dealt with. So that there is no "end of history", which has become too often mentioned lately.
It is necessary to understand so that a person has a future.
Final remark
The proposed article takes into account the current state of mind. I didn’t make it pseudoscientific - with links and citations. And the current reader is disgusted, and yet everything can be found on the Internet. Everything is still easy to find by keywords. Just in case (substitution in the texts - and we are not immune from this) in the near future I will try to provide the article with citations and the very texts of operational reports, combat orders, quotes from memoirs - in separate Appendices.
But for now I am in a hurry - to lay out exactly the considerations that I have outlined - and move on to no less important tasks. There are a lot of them nowadays. So many.
And they also need to be dealt with urgently - so that the "end of history" does not come.
