The sad date of June 22 makes us remember how many questions are still raised by the history of the beginning of the Great Patriotic War. Why did the Kremlin ignore intelligence reports about Hitler's preparations for an attack on the USSR? How did the experience of the Civil War help the Soviet military leaders? What was the Soviet cavalry really like in the 1940s? How did the Germans themselves assess the resistance of the Soviet troops in June 1941? Stalin's deep apathy and inaction in the first week of the war - myth or reality?
His view on these and other important issues of our history was presented by the author of books on military history (including "Unknown 1941. Blitzkrieg Stopped", "Anti-Suvorov. Ten Myths of World War II"), co-author of documentaries about the Great Patriotic War, employee Institute of Military History of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation Alexey Isaev.
Aleksey Valerievich, it has long been assumed that Soviet intelligence officers, long before the start of the war, presented Stalin with detailed and substantiated evidence of Germany's preparation for an attack on the USSR. According to some publicists, Moscow already in December 1940 became aware of the "Barbarossa Plan". How true is this?
This is in no way true. The information from the scouts was vague and vague, in particular, the possible timing of the German attack varied widely and the actual date of June 22 was announced when there was no time for an adequate response. measures to ensure the secrecy of preparations for "Barbarossa". Up to a certain point, the concentration of German troops could be interpreted as "building a defensive infantry barrier in the east before landing in England." Only in the last, fifth echelon of the transfer of troops to the border with the USSR were tank divisions advanced.
At the same time, it should be noted that weak analytical work was a serious shortcoming in the work of Soviet intelligence. The data obtained was broadcast "upstairs" in its raw form, without analysis. Really serious analytical notes, in particular the note of the military attaché in Berlin V. I. Tupikov, were simply lost in the general mass of information. At the same time, Tupikov in April 1941. did not name the exact date of the invasion, he wrote: "The timing of the start of the collision - perhaps shorter and certainly within the current year."
Against this background, there was no question of any plans "Barbarossa" stolen from safes.
The first months of the Great Patriotic War are often associated with the "general flight of Soviet troops." It is believed that the Soviet units could not seriously influence the advance of the Wehrmacht forces. As far as can be understood, in your recently published book "Unknown 1941. Blitzkrieg Stopped" Do you argue with this stereotype?
Indeed, in the mass consciousness there is a myth about a large and well-armed Red Army, which literally crumbled under the blows of a few German tank formations. However, if we turn to German documents that were written in real June 1941. (and not to the memoirs written decades after the lost war), then we will see such words as "stubborn resistance", "great enemy casualties," "few prisoners."
The three groups of Wehrmacht armies that invaded the territory of the USSR had a significant advantage in the directions of the main attacks over the formations of the border special districts opposing them. On June 22, 1941. about 40 Soviet formations could join the battle, and more than 100 German divisions, tank and infantry, attacked them. The results of such a collision are not hard to imagine.
When writing "Unknown 1941. Blitzkrieg Stopped" I had to turn a lot to German sources, both documents and research. Just in view of the fact that the documents of the units and formations of the Western Front for June 1941. few have survived. Even me, a person who has been researching the events of 1941 for several years, was struck by numerous episodes of energetic and thoughtful resistance of the Soviet troops encircled near Bialystok.
Many publicists talk about the "reassessment of the role of cavalry" by the Soviet military command and even the "horse attacks with sabers against tanks" organized by it. How true is this? How can you assess the role of cavalry in this war?
Cavalry 1941 was more a horse-riding infantry than a classic cavalry with melee weapons. It was a kind of "motorized infantry for hard-to-reach terrain." Riding a horse required good physical training, and therefore the cavalry units were distinguished by good training and high fighting spirit. That is why the cavalrymen were among the first to join the ranks of the Soviet guard. By 1945. all seven cavalry corps in the Red Army had the rank of guards.
Horse attacks were the rare exception rather than the rule. They were used when striking a demoralized and retreating enemy in disorder. In particular, one such documented case relates to Operation Uranus at Stalingrad in November 1942. Then the cavalry from the 8th Cavalry Corps cut down the running Romanian infantrymen in the equestrian formation.
Wanting to emphasize the incompetence of Soviet military leaders at the beginning of World War II, researchers often write that they transferred the tactics of the Civil War to the conflict with Nazi Germany. In your works, on the contrary, you emphasize that the experience of the Civil War was in demand during the Great Patriotic War. Why do you think so?
When they talk about the transfer of the experience of the Civil War in the USSR to the Great Patriotic War, they often forget that it was very diverse. Horse lavas, armored trains and carts, known to us from films and popular books, were just one of the pages of that war. A much less famous, but at the same time more demanded experience was the experience of hurried army building. When, in a matter of weeks, at best, months, new units and formations were formed and armed. The experience of this construction, at a new stage of development, was in demand in 1941. It was the newly formed divisions and brigades that saved the USSR from defeat. It was they who found themselves on the way of German tanks to Moscow and Leningrad.
In most modern feature films about the war, the political worker is portrayed as a cartoon character, a cowardly person and an absolutely superfluous person on the front line. How close is this image to reality?
Of course, both among the commissars and among the commanders of units, formations and formations of the Red Army, one could meet different people. Caricature characters could also be found among them. However, there was also a flow of information along the line of the political leadership, duplicating and clarifying the one that went along the line of the military command. That is, commanders and commanders were able to compare information on the military and party lines and make decisions based on a greater amount of information. Moreover, sometimes political reports turn out to be more informative from the point of view of understanding the events that took place than avaricious operative reports. This practice turned out to be in demand during the war and even deepened: the General Staff of the Red Army introduced the position of officers of the General Staff to the troops, who reported on the state of the troops and the conduct of operations.
In addition, it should be noted that not all political workers were civilian party leaders without appropriate education and experience. Among them were such people as Commissioner I. Z. Susaykov, a legendary person, the hero of the defense of Borisov in July 1941. He was a tanker by training and headed the Borisov Automobile and Tractor School not as a party leader, but as a specialist. Subsequently, he was a member of the Military Council of the Bryansk, Voronezh, Steppe and 1st Ukrainian Fronts.
It should also be said that in 1944. a kind of "commissars" appeared in the Wehrmacht. These were the so-called “officers of the National Socialist leadership”. This fact can be interpreted as the adversary's recognition of the usefulness of the institution of commissars.
Counterattacks against the advancing Wehrmacht forces in the early days of the war are usually cited as an example of the tactics of the Soviet command, which doomed its soldiers to "senseless death". Is this tactic really meaningless?
Counterstrikes were a necessary element of defense throughout the war. The Germans, whose authority as military professionals is beyond doubt, practiced counterattacks right up to the last months and days of the war. Moreover, the well-known successes of the Wehrmacht in defense were achieved precisely by counterattacks. So, it was Manstein's counterattack, carried out by the forces of the SS Panzer Corps in February-March 1943, that led to the loss of the newly liberated Kharkov and a halt in the advance of the Red Army to the west. In August 1943. counterattacks in the area of Bogodukhov and Akhtyrka allowed the Germans to restore the integrity of the crumbling front of Army Group South near Kursk during the Soviet counteroffensive. Counterstrikes brought up to Warsaw reserves allowed the Germans in August 1944. prevent the liberation of the Polish capital and became a cover for the defeat of the Warsaw uprising. Another question is that the immediate effect of the inflicted counterattacks was not always visible. However, they forced them to stop, to divert additional forces to defend the flanks. Counterattack near Soltsy in July 1941. he postponed the loss of Novgorod for almost a month and slowed down the 4th Panzer Group's run to Leningrad. Counterattacks at Oratov and Zhivotov delayed the encirclement of the 6th and 12th armies near Uman. Strikes on German units near Yelnya at the end of July 1941. postponed the closure of the encirclement ring around the 16th and 20th armies near Smolensk. In each of these cases, the Germans wasted time, which in the end was not enough near Moscow, Leningrad and Rostov. Such examples can be cited for a long time. If we try to summarize the main idea of the practice of counterstrikes, then we can say this: "A counterstrike is a way of using troops where we are strong, and the enemy is potentially weak." Troop movements are not instantaneous. Therefore, if a tank formation is at point "A", it is far from always possible to use it at point "B", where the enemy struck an unexpected blow (although the practice of "reinforcing" the defense with tanks also took place). However, this tank formation can be used to strike on the flank of the enemy grouping aimed at point "B". Moreover, the flank barrier will obviously be weaker than the enemy strike group.
The opinion has long been established that the Soviet military leaders absolutely did not reckon with the losses of their troops. Such accusations are often brought against by modern authors, for example, to Marshal Georgy Zhukov. Is this opinion justified?
No, it is not justified. Moreover, there are documents in which G. K. Zhukov in plain text demands from his army commanders to take care of people. The thesis about the special "bloodiness" of Zhukov is not confirmed by statistics either. The specific losses of the formations he commanded (i.e.the ratio of losses to the number of troops that suffered these losses) turn out to be lower than that of its neighbors in the same period of time.
Even if we assume that the Soviet commanders did not have any moral responsibility for the lives of the people entrusted to them (which is obviously not the case), it made sense to protect people from purely practical imaginations. If the division, army, front will suffer heavy losses today, then with whom to fight tomorrow? With whom to liberate new cities and receive orders, to grow up the career ladder. It is obvious that the best career growth will be for the one who is more successful in attacking and defending and requires fewer reinforcements. Replenishments do not fall from the sky, 34 million people passed through the Red Army, the NKVD and other formations of the USSR during the war, and about 20 million people went through the German armed forces. With such a ratio of human potential, it is difficult to fight regardless of losses.
There could be no exceptions. No closeness to the leader could replace successes at the front. Tymoshenko, who rose high before the war, in June 1941. he was the people's commissar of defense, was removed without much hesitation by Stalin for a series of failures in July 1942. and ended the war on a secondary track.
Critics of Zhukov and other generals often approach them with incorrect assessment criteria. Zhukov might not be the most pleasant person to talk to, but he was a military genius. Geniuses, on the other hand, often turn out to be difficult people in everyday communication. He could get annoyed when his subordinates did not understand things that were obvious to him and did not see the decisions that were obvious to him in battle and operation.
The first months of the Great Patriotic War are often associated with the use of detachments, which were supposed to stop the retreat of Soviet troops. Among the countries participating in World War II, was this tactic used only in the USSR?
All the warring parties had some mechanisms for dealing with deserters. Recently I was in the city of Seelow and I was told that in April 1945. one of the streets of this German town became the "alley of the gallows": the German command mercilessly dealt with deserters and those who showed weakness on the battlefield. In the last months of the war, Field Marshal Ferdinand Scherner, the commander of Army Group Center, received an unfortunate reputation as a brutal commander, quick to crack down on deserters.
It is also necessary to say that the first barrage detachments appeared under the pressure of circumstances in the early days of the war. Then they were an initiative from below. Such was, for example, the detachment of the Western Front, commanded by … Intendant Maslov. Yes, yes, it was the intendant from the city of Tolochin. Who, on his own initiative, stopped the retreating and put things in order on the Minsk-Moscow highway.
Order No. 227 July 1942. actually legalized and streamlined the activities of the detachments.
Publicists sometimes associate the most severe defeats of Soviet troops in the early days of the war with Stalin's apathy, who retired from making strategic decisions. Do you agree with this assessment?
Such a legend really did circulate in perestroika times; it was put into circulation, if I am not mistaken, by Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev. Now, when the journal of visits to Stalin's office in the Kremlin has been published, it can be quite definitely asserted that there was no weekly flight to the dacha and self-removal from business. In the first days of the war, J. V. Stalin worked hard, receiving in his office the highest leaders of the army and industry. Moreover, it was at this time that many key decisions were made. In particular, about the rejection of the pre-war mobilization plan and the formation of new formations. There is a pass for about a day after the loss of Minsk. But this is a day, not a week. In addition, on that day, Stalin could not receive visitors in the Kremlin, but he himself could visit the General Staff, for example.
