By mid-August 1941, the situation at the fronts was becoming more and more difficult. On the Northern Front, the Red Army had to leave Tallinn, the Nazis broke through the Luga line of defense and were rapidly advancing towards Leningrad. Under these conditions, the Headquarters of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief decided to reorganize the Northern Front and create two separate fronts on this bridgehead. One - to defend Leningrad, the other, Karelian, - to defend the northern borders of the country. The length of the Karelian front was fantastic - more than 1500 km.
Lieutenant General Valerian Aleksandrovich Frolov knew the northern regions of the country well. Even in peacetime, he devoted a lot of effort to the creation of fortified areas of this region. Therefore, when the Karelian Front was created on August 23, 1941, the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Red Army I. V. Stalin had no doubts about the appointment of V. A. Frolov as the commander of this front.
German troops near Leningrad at that moment were advancing towards the city at a speed of more than 30 km per day. Finnish troops, fulfilling the tasks set by Hitler, also rapidly occupied the territory of the northern part of the USSR. According to the plans of fascist Germany, when, for a number of reasons, Finland became an "axis" country, it was assigned the role of a deep seizure of the north of the USSR. According to this plan, on the very eve of the Great Patriotic War, 16 Finnish saboteurs, disguised in German uniform and trained by the German intelligence officer Major Scheler, landed in the area of the 6th lock of the Belomorkanal to undermine the dams in order to destroy the channel and stop the escort of warships from the Baltic to the Northern Fleet … Through the efforts of the canal's militarized guards, testers of the radio engineering system of one of the Leningrad research institutes who carried out research work there, and four prisoners - these were students seconded to provide equipment tests - the saboteurs were destroyed. The saboteurs were disembarking from two He-115 seaplanes, launched from the Finnish Lake Oulujärvi. While the Red Army units of the Karelian Front were holding back the Finnish offensive, the submarines, patrol boats, torpedo boats and auxiliary ships were escorted through the canal day and night. Although the nights in this region during this period of the year could be considered conditional. The period of "white nights" continued.
The destruction of a group of saboteurs forced the fascist and Finnish command to look for new methods to destroy the White Sea Canal. The limited armament and the small number of units of the Karelian Front did not allow the timely establishment of the air defense of the channel. Therefore, the groups of Ju-88A aircraft of the KGr 806 squadron began to appear above the canal without hindrance, they were based at the Utti and Malmi airfields in southern Finland. By a happy coincidence, the raids did not cause catastrophic destruction to the structures of the Belomorkanal, so the workers of all services managed to carry out restoration work and continue to pilot the ships.
During one of the raids on lock No. 9, the bomb dropped from the lead bomber did not hit the lock gate, but into the concrete abutment. The explosion on a solid concrete surface turned out to be directed upwards. He hit the plane and the Ju-88A fell apart. The bomber was piloted by Chief Lieutenant Eming, whose certificate the channel specialists got from the wreckage of the Junkers.
By this time, the evacuation transportations through the canal of civilians of Karelia, specialists and equipment of individual enterprises of the republic had already begun. The Povenets shipyard, which was equipped with good equipment, was evacuated in full force. In the pre-war period, after the end of navigation, dozens of ships of the Belomoro-Onega Shipping Company were repaired at the shipyard. The Povenets part of the sluices and dams of the canal was urgently equipped with anti-aircraft installations.
People's Commissar of the river fleet of the country Z. A. Shashkov especially noted the valor of the Karelian water workers. In his orders of that time, one can find the following formulations: “The staff of the management of the track of the White Sea-Baltic Canal named after I. V. Stalin, with the active participation of the leaders of the Belomoro-Onega Shipping Company, in difficult conditions, in an extremely short time completed the most difficult production task … "The employees of the channel were awarded the badges" Excellence in Socialist Competition of the People's Commissariat of the River Fleet."
After heavy fighting, Red Army units on October 1, 1941 were forced to leave Petrozavodsk, and began to retreat to the north. A few days later, the front command created the Medvezhyegorsk task force, the headquarters of which was located in Medvezhyegorsk from October 20, 1941. Four partisan detachments operated in this area. But the enemy in this direction outnumbered the Red Army units in numbers more than 3 times, and in armament - 6 times.
The stubbornness with which the Finnish units rushed to Medvezhyegorsk was understandable to the headquarters of the Karelian Front. But there was nothing to hold back this enemy offensive, there were no reserves. According to the plan, which was agreed by fascist Germany, the Finnish troops, having captured Medvezhyegorsk and Povenets, were supposed to go up the canal to Morskaya Maselga and further to Sumy Posad. On the coast of the White Sea, the Nazis and Finns hoped to close the ring around northern Karelia and cut the path from the Kola Peninsula to the central regions of the USSR. Assessing the situation, the front command, with the involvement of individual hydrotechnical specialists of the Belomorkanal, in strict secrecy, mined the locks from the first to the sixth, as well as the dam in the area of the seventh lock. The charges were placed in specially prepared pits. The watershed level at the dam and Lake Onega was more than 80 meters. The hydrotechnical specialists were well aware that if the plan of detonation was fulfilled, the village of Povenets would be washed into the lake. In mid-December 1941, the Belomorkanal began to freeze, and on December 5, Finnish units broke into Medvezhyegorsk. The days of fighting for this northern city, which changed hands several times, cost the Finns more than 600 soldiers irrecoverable losses. The command of the Karelian Front explained such sacrifices very simply - the enemy climbed into the firing points in a drunken state. Finnish troops, led by Mannerheim and Ryti, celebrated the "Independence Day". In 1918, on this day, Finland seceded from Russia on the basis of a decree of the Soviet government.
The operation to destroy the Finns in Medvezhyegorsk was led by the commander of the 313rd division, Grigory Vasilyevich Golovanov. His plan was carried out by the surviving soldiers and commanders of the 126th and 131st regiments. This battle in Medvezhyegorsk played an important role in the defense of the approaches to Belomorkanal. The troops of the advancing Finns were divided into three groups, and a significant part of them G. V. Golovanov was thrown to the north-east of the city on the off-road. Parts of the troops of the Medvezhyegorsk operational group withdrew through the fur farm, along the shores of Lake Onega and in the environs. Troops were ferried across the canal by barges and sluice gates. We managed to withdraw not only all the troops and equipment, but also to evacuate the remaining civilians. The troops retreated to the Pudozh area. On the morning of December 7, the last units of the Red Army left Povenets, an armored battalion of the Finnish army entered the village. In the afternoon of December 7 at 14 o'clock, sappers blew up the gates of lock No. 6. This was done to prevent the Finnish army from crossing the channel. After the withdrawal of all units of the Red Army to the lines established by the headquarters of the Karelian Front, dam No. 20 and gate No. 7 were blown up in turn. The order of the command was carried out on December 11, 1941.
The waters of Volozero gushed to Povenets when the air temperature reached minus 37 degrees. The ice bank washed away everything in its path for three days. What the fascists and the Finnish leadership, led by Risto Ryti and Mannerheim, tried to do in June 1941, they received in December 1941. At that moment, 80 out of 800 previously employed specialists continued to perform their duties on the White Sea Canal. Only 8 specialists remained in the staff of the Povenets and Onega technical departments. The blasting operations were carried out personally by the heads of the locks, the dam was blown up by the deputy head of the "Hydro Department of the Canal" and the sappers assigned to them of the Medvezhyegorsk operational group of the Karelian Front. This was due to the fact that only the chiefs of the sluices were competently aware of the hydraulic technical features of the equipment of the objects entrusted to them.
Even then, the leadership of the People's Commissariat for River Fleet believed that specialists under the guidance of the heads of the locks would have to restore the locks and the canal. This is how selfless and loyal to the country leaders were appreciated at the very beginning of the war. A different picture was in a number of other regions of the country, where the destruction of factories, bridges and other objects was carried out by sappers of the active army. If the withdrawal of units of the Karelian Front to new positions was carried out under the control of the command, then a different picture developed at the end of November 1941 on the roadstead near Povenets. Dozens of ships of the shipping company, having not received instructions on the place of wintering, arrived in Povenets. Here the teams were captured by the Finns and many were shot.
The actions of the Soviet government, with the participation of the United States and Britain, to compel the Finnish government to cease military operations against the USSR, continued from the very beginning of the war. However, the agreements signed with Hitler were more valuable to the Finns than those offered by the USSR and its allies. Therefore, the last step remained - to declare war on Finland.
December 6, 1941 Great Britain declares war on Finland, December 7, 1941 - Canada and New Zealand, December 9, 1941 - Australia and South Africa. The United States refrained from declaring war. But the warnings that went to the Finnish top leadership hinted that if hostilities against the USSR continued, they would be declared war criminals after the defeat of Germany. They will face trial and execution. For a number of reasons, the Karelian Front became stable after December 11, 1941. Until 1944, the troops remained in the positions that they occupied on December 11, 1941.
The destruction of enemy units by a water stream as a result of a dam was blown up was the only and effective one for the entire period of the Great Patriotic War and only on the Karelian front.
P. S. General V. A. Frolov has passed the glorious path of the defender of our Fatherland. He was born in Petrograd in 1895, died on January 6, 1961, and was buried in Leningrad.
In March 1942, the People's Commissariat for the River Fleet of the country made a decision to restore the White Sea Canal. On June 22, 1944, the village of Povenets was liberated and the southern section of the canal was cleared of the Finns. The movement of ships along the Belomorkanal was restored already in 1946. This is how our grandfathers and fathers worked to restore the economy destroyed by the Nazis.
Mannerheim and Ryti escaped trial as war criminals, which is a pity. They were spared by I. V. Stalin. On their hands is the blood of hundreds of thousands of our compatriots and the terrible blockade of Leningrad. If they had not got involved in the war on the side of Nazi Germany, the Murmansk-Leningrad railway could have operated, and the city would have escaped the blockade.
