"Fast Heinz", commander of the 2nd Panzer Army, Colonel General Heinz Guderian, has already fled from Dudkino, but the German headquarters remained. On November 28, 1941, German units cleaned the Stalinogorsk cauldron from the remaining Siberians and buried their dead comrades at the military cemetery in Dudkino. A military burial was also located in the village of Novo-Yakovlevka. 15-year-old Vasily Kortukov, nearly blown up with a grenade, many of which were scattered throughout the village, took the most direct part in this: “When the battle ended, the Germans forced us to bury 24 of their soldiers in the village, along the road. The German commanded us. They buried them right in their uniforms, put black crosses and 9 helmets. " In Dudkino, there was a larger cemetery.
Not far away, in a shed, blown by all the winds, our soldiers were lying - presumably, they were wounded from the 239th rifle division, whom they tried to take out during a breakthrough from the encirclement, or they were intercepted earlier when the Stalinogorsk ring was closed. A local resident Zoya Fedorovna Molodkina (a 10-year-old girl in 1941) recalls: “We had a teacher nearby. The Germans killed her brother, who was in the partisans. She cut a cotton blanket, wanted to give a piece to ours, so that they would not be so cold. She was almost shot for this. Two or three of the wounded tried to escape, but did not escape - they were later found icy by the local residents in ricks outside the village. They died of wounds and cold. Zoya Molodkina further clarifies: “In the evening in the same shed they pushed a girl, also a military man (probably a nurse or a military doctor), I don’t know where she was caught”. And so there were 8 of them.
And the next morning, November 28, the Germans drove the local residents to the Markovka River, attached a sawed-down telephone pole to two willows, took these eight out of the shed and hung them one at a time. They say that no one asked for mercy, and the girl managed to shout:
Do not outweigh everyone, you bastards!
It is not known for certain, but there is no reason not to believe Zoya Molodkina. This brutal mass execution is not mentioned anywhere in any German documents. Also in the illustrated history of the 29th Motorized Infantry Division there are only photographs of the “smoking heap of ruins” in Novo-Yakovlevka, as well as “carcasses of burned-out vehicles” and fresh graves of dead German soldiers with birch crosses.
Obviously, this was not a spontaneous lynching of the German infantrymen who had moved in their minds, but a demonstrative execution of Soviet prisoners of war sanctioned and organized by the command of the division. Let's call the participles by name:
Major General Max Fremerey, commander of the 29th Motorized Infantry Division (pictured);
-Commander of the 15th Motorized Infantry Regiment, Lieutenant Colonel (from December 1 - Colonel) Max Ulich;
- Commander of the 71st Motorized Infantry Regiment, Lieutenant Colonel Hans Hecker;
Colonel Georg Jauer, Commander of the 29th Motorized Artillery Regiment.
The technology has been worked out. For the command of the division, this was not the first war crime. The 29th Motorized Infantry Regiment first "distinguished itself" when, on September 8, 1939, soldiers of its 15th Infantry Regiment, accused of "partisan activity" on the orders of Lieutenant Colonel Walter Wessel, shot 300 Polish prisoners of war from the 74th Infantry Regiment (the so-called mass murder in Czepilów). Walter Wessel then managed to fight in France, to take part in the Eastern campaign against the Soviet Union, until July 20, 1943, during an inspection trip to the troops, an accident happened to him in Italy. And deadly. In 1971, the Poles launched an investigation against the soldiers of the 15th Infantry Regiment, but soon it was closed due to lack of evidence.
But it's not over yet. Zoya Molodkina recalls:
The executed fighters were 10, and the total number of victims of ordinary soldiers of the Wehrmacht reached 18. In the act of December 27, 1941 (Kimovsky archive, f.3, op.1, d.2. Ll. 146-146-ob) local residents, getting lost out of excitement, they write about these inconceivable events on paper as follows: “
Ivan Baryshev, a regimental intelligence officer of the 1095th Infantry Regiment of the 324th Infantry Division, was among those first Red Army soldiers who entered, or rather crawled into Dudkino on December 9:
Meanwhile, life was gradually being restored in the post-war Dudkino. The victory came at a very high cost. The villagers decided to perpetuate the memory of the executed defenders of the Motherland, whose names remain unknown to this day. A modest wooden monument with a star: "Eternal glory to the fighters who died for the Soviet homeland" appeared on the mass grave near the bridge across Markovka on the road to Gremyachy. According to the information of the Kimovsky RVK, 18 people are buried here: “Of these, 10 people were brutally beaten and shot, and the remaining 8 fighters were hanged after torture in the village. Dudkino ". Later they were reburied in the Karachev forest, and a memorial sign was erected at the place of execution.
Novomoskovsk journalist Andrei Lifke in his article “Obelisk at Markovka” (Tula Izvestia, November 29, 2007) cites the following information: “The shot were first buried on the banks of the Markovka, then their ashes were transferred to a mass grave in Kimovsk, in the Karachevsky forest. But there is also a version that, contrary to official information, the remains of the hanged Red Army soldiers were not transported to Karachevo - as they were buried on the banks of the Markovka River, they still lie there under a modest white obelisk … "Residents of the nearest house in a personal conversation (July 2016) confirm that to this day, at night they dream of visions of soldiers in helmets and raincoats. Some kind of mysticism? But search engines know not by hearsay that soldiers can only be transferred "on paper" - according to documents, but in fact their bodies lie where they are. Therefore, this version requires additional investigation and search work on the spot.
Then Andrei Lifke neatly touches upon the issue of historical memory: “According to Zoya Molodkina, only one of the eight executed had a“death medallion”- a native of Stalinogorsk, that is, present-day Novomoskovsk. For many years, on holidays, his father came to worship the ashes. Now another, heavily grayed man travels regularly. Maybe brother?"
But the story of the German war crime in Dudkino does not end there. In 2012, German researcher Henning Stüring, whose grandfather fought on the Eastern Front, published his work Als der Osten brannte (While the East was Burning). His personal immersion in the topic began with one phrase from his grandfather that shook Henning to the core:
Then the Russians launched an attack on the frozen Lake Ilmen, and our machine guns killed them all.
Before and after that, my grandfather never again spoke about his war experiences: "Today it is no longer possible to imagine it." The Ostfront, and 75 years later, means death and injury for millions and traumatic memories for surviving German soldiers.
Henning Stüring's particular attention was drawn to the documentary “With a camera to Stalingrad” (“Mit der Kamera nach Stalingrad”). It presents a newsreel, which was filmed on a personal movie camera by two soldiers of the same German 29th Motorized Infantry Division: Wilhelm Bleitner and Götz Hirt-Reger (Wilhelm Bleitner and Götz Hirt-Reger). The footage is being commented on by former participants in those events, veterans of the same division. Henning draws attention to one fragment, broadcast on the German TV channel ZDF in the program "History" as evidence of the "merciless treatment of the Wehrmacht with the partisans." For a long time, the cameraman takes pictures of 8 hanging Soviet soldiers with their hands tied behind their backs, among whom one can guess one woman, on two willows with a cut down telephone pole …
Henning Stüring makes a devastating conclusion:
These are the words on the shield:
These beasts from the Russian 239th, 813th and 817th regiments despicably mutilated and killed German soldiers in Spasskoye on the night of November 26, 1941.
The regiments of the Siberian 239th Infantry Division are clearly and unambiguously listed here. Let us once again compare with the recollections of the former deputy political instructor of the machine-gun company of the 1st battalion of the 1095th rifle regiment of the 324th rifle division F. N. Shakhanov: then we saw eight of our soldiers hanged on these trees, and among them one woman - apparently, a medical officer”. It all fits together.
Then Henning Stühring speaks:
In conclusion, we present a photo from the album of a German soldier of the 29th engineer battalion of the 29th mechanized infantry division. Standing on the road, he took this terrible shot for you and me. Their names are still unknown. Nobody is forgotten, nothing is forgotten?..
A. E. Yakovlev, September 2016.
The author expresses his deep gratitude to M. I. Vladimirov, V. S. Ermolaev, S. A. Mitrofanov, S. G. Sopov, Yu. A. Shakirov, Henning Stüring for the provided archival documents, newspaper notes and photographic materials.
Instead of an epilogue
Until now, one can often find the opinion that atrocities in our land could only have been committed by parts of the SS or traitorous policemen. Well, the soldiers of the Wehrmacht simply and honestly did their duty - they fought. However, no traces of SS troops were found on the territory of the Tula region, and the German 2nd Panzer Army of Guderian belonged to the regular army - the Wehrmacht. So, is it really just because of the traitorous policemen that all these acts of atrocities by the German fascist invaders on the territory of districts of the Tula region are now stored in the archives? The word to the senior corporal of the 5th company of the 35th motorized infantry regiment of the 25th motorized infantry division, German Schwartz, on December 3, 1941, somewhere in the Tula region:
Herman Schwartz's diary was captured by units of the Bryansk Front in the area northwest of Mtsensk on January 10, 1942. Its author did not expect that on February 16, 1942, these lines would be translated into Russian by Lieutenant Shkolnik and Quartermaster Technician 1st Rank Goremykin. He simply ate a pig, shot a woman and burned 6 people alive. All this was written in his diary not by a psycho, not an SS man, not a traitor-policeman, but an ordinary soldier of the Wehrmacht. And he is not alone: “Sunday, November 30, 1941. All day on duty, but we ate like in the best hotel. Cutlets with potatoes. They killed 13 partisans. " Similar diaries of our western "liberators", former partners, are now kept in TsAMO, fund 500 - German trophy collections. 50 inventories, which summarize about 28,000 cases, which is approximately 2-2.5 million pages with turns. It turns out that "Heinz" is not only ketchup, but the Holocaust is not at all glue for wallpaper …
