"Crusade" of the West against Russia. On June 22, 1941, all of Europe flooded to our Motherland, but nothing came of it! Why? Russia survived thanks to the Soviet people's power.
Transformation of Soviet Russia
In the First World War, Russia had allies. Together with us, France, England, Italy, Serbia, Romania, the USA and Japan fought with the German bloc. And Finland and Poland were part of the Russian Empire, they were not our enemies. However, Russia lost the war. And the USSR fought with all of Europe, led by Hitler, with the expectant position of Britain and the United States, and won a brilliant victory. Our troops have hoisted a red Russian banner in Berlin.
Of course, England and the United States fought, especially at sea and in the air, distinguished themselves in the bombing of German cities. We won at tertiary theaters. But the Third Reich could not be defeated only in Africa, at sea and in the air. The German ground forces were destroyed by the Soviet Army.
Why did the Soviet Union win? The situation in 1941 was much worse than in 1914. Hitler, in order to crush the Soviet global project, Soviet (Russian) civilization and the society of knowledge, service and creation, which became an alternative to the Western project of enslaving mankind, the society of masters and slaves, was given almost all of Europe. His rise to power was supported by the financial capital of France, Switzerland, England and the United States.
There are two main reasons. First, Russia under the leadership of Stalin prepared for an extremely brutal, bloody war, a battle for the survival of Russian civilization, power and people. Two five-year plans were not in vain. New armed forces, a powerful military-industrial complex were created, industrialization was carried out, with the formation of new industrial regions in the east of the country, far from the future front. Advanced industries have been created practically from scratch - aircraft construction, engine construction, machine tool construction, shipbuilding, etc. The development of science, technology, education has ensured technological independence. Collectivization ensured the country's food security. Most of the "fifth column" was destroyed, the remnants went underground and disguised themselves.
Secondly, a new society has been created, united, united, believing in a bright future, ready to tear any enemy to shreds. In Russia at the beginning of the 1940s, people lived completely different from those in the 1910s-1920s or at the present time. For Russian men in 1914-1916 the war was completely unnecessary and incomprehensible. The peasants (the overwhelming majority of the population) desired land and peace. For educated people, Constantinople, the Bosphorus and Dardanelles, Galician Rus meant something. But those were in the minority. In addition, most of the educated people, the intelligentsia, hated the tsarist regime, wanted its death. In the 1920s, society was sick, broken by a big war and blood, Troubles, general chaos and collapse.
By 1941, the Soviet government was able to create a new society with incredible efforts.
In the perestroika and post-perestroika times, the liberals created the myth of the "sovka". A mean, lazy, stupid Soviet man. They say that the Soviet people worked out of pressure, out of fear of the NKVD, did not learn anything, did not know how to do anything, wrote denunciations against each other, etc.
It is interesting that the Russian liberals borrowed this myth from the Nazis. Before the war, the Nazis also thought contemptuously of the Soviet (Russian) people. They remembered the Russians of 1914. The soldiers, mostly peasants, were illiterate, technically inferior to the Germans. And under the rule of the Bolshevik commissars, in the opinion of the German elite, the Russians became even worse. Slaves of the communists. However, after the start of the war, the Germans quickly changed their minds about the Russian (Soviet) people.
New Soviet society
Analysts of the Gestapo, on the basis of data received from all over the Third Reich, in the summer of 1942 presented a report containing interesting information about the population of Russia. The Germans had to conclude that the pre-war propaganda about Soviet people turned out to be false.
The first thing that surprised the Germans was the appearance of Soviet slaves (ostarbeiters) brought to the Reich. The Germans expected to see peasants and factory workers tortured to death by work on collective farms. However, the opposite was true. Obviously, the Russians ate well: “They don't look starving at all. On the contrary, they still have thick cheeks and must have lived well. Health workers noted good teeth in Russian women, which is the most important indicator of the health of the people.
Then the Germans were surprised by the general literacy of the Russians and its level. The general consensus in Germany was that in Soviet Russia, people were generally illiterate, and the level of education was low. The use of ostarbeiters showed that the Russians have a good schooling. In all reports from the field, it was noted that the illiterate make up a very small percentage. For example, in a letter from a certified engineer who ran a company in Ukraine, it was reported that at his company, out of 1,800 employees, only three were illiterate (Reichenberg). Other reports cited similar facts: “In the opinion of many Germans, the current Soviet school education is much better than it was during the tsarist era. Comparison of the skill of Russian and German agricultural workers often turns out to be in favor of the Soviet ones”(Stettin). “Particular amazement was caused by the widespread knowledge of the German language, which is studied even in rural junior high schools” (Frankfurt an der Oder).
The Germans were surprised by the intelligence and technical literacy of Russian workers. They were waiting for slaves to be slaughtered. In German propaganda, the Soviet person was shown as a dumb, downtrodden and exploited creature, the so-called. "Working robot". Now the Germans saw the opposite. Russian workers sent to military enterprises surprised the Germans with their technical literacy. The Russians surprised the Germans with their ingenuity when they managed to make something worthwhile out of "all sorts of rubbish" (I immediately recall M. Zadornov, talking about Russian thinking and creative energy). German workers, who observed the level of Russian technical skill in production, believed that not the best workers had yet arrived in the Reich, the most skilled workers from large enterprises were taken by the Soviet authorities to the east of Russia.
Thus, it became clear why the Russians suddenly had so many modern weapons and equipment. A large number of modern and good quality weapons and equipment was evidence of the presence of a significant layer of qualified engineers and specialists. The Germans also noted the large number of students among Soviet workers. From this it is concluded that the level of education in Soviet Russia is not as low as it was believed.
High moral society
In the area of morality, Russians in Soviet Russia retained the old patriarchal traditions characteristic of "old Russia." This surprised the Germans. Hitler pursued a policy aimed at creating a healthy society and family. German society suffered greatly in the 1920s, when poverty, "democratization", the advance of materialism hit the Germans hard. And for the Russians in the field of morality, everything was not only good, but even excellent.
For example, the reports noted: “Sexually, Ostarbeiters, especially women, show healthy restraint …” From Kiel: “In general, a Russian woman sexually does not at all correspond to the ideas of German propaganda. Sexual debauchery is completely unknown to her. In various districts, the population says that during the general medical examination of the eastern workers, all the girls were found to have preserved virginity. " Report from Breslau: “Wolfen Film Factory reports that during a medical examination at the enterprise it was found that 90% of Eastern workers between the ages of 17 and 29 were chaste. According to various German representatives, the impression is that the Russian man pays due attention to the Russian woman, which is ultimately reflected also in the moral aspects of life."
Russian spirit
The Germans propagated that the Russians fought for fear of the NKVD, Stalin's terror and exile to Siberia. In Berlin, they believed in this when they made plans for a "lightning war". The USSR in their plans was "a colossus with feet of clay." The outbreak of the war was to trigger a massive uprising of peasants, workers, Cossacks and national minorities against the Bolsheviks. Subsequently, the Solzhenitsyn, Yakovlev, Gorbachev and Gaidars continued the propaganda of this myth created by the Gestapo.
German entrepreneurs and workers were very surprised that there were no Ostarbeiters among them who would be punished in their own country. Further, to everyone's amazement, it was not found in large camps that the relatives of the Ostarbeiters were forcibly exiled, arrested or shot. I had to conclude that the terrorist methods of the GPU-NKVD are not of such great importance in the USSR as it previously seemed.
The Germans began to understand why they failed to crush the "slave" Soviet Union with one powerful blow. Why the Red Army demonstrated high combat power, and the Soviet soldiers demonstrated high fighting spirit:
“Until today, persistence in battle was explained by the fear of the commissar and political instructor's pistol. Sometimes a complete indifference to life was interpreted on the basis of animal traits inherent in people in the east. Time and again, however, the suspicion arises that naked violence is not enough to trigger life-neglecting action in combat. In various ways, they come to the idea that Bolshevism led to the emergence of a kind of fanatical faith. In the Soviet Union, perhaps many people, mainly the younger generation, are of the opinion that Stalin is a great politician. At the very least, Bolshevism, no matter what means, instilled in a large part of the Russian population an unyielding stubbornness. It was our soldiers who established that such an organized display of perseverance was never seen in the First World War. It is likely that people in the east are very different from us in terms of racial and national characteristics, however, behind the enemy's combat power, there are still qualities such as a kind of love for the fatherland, a kind of courage and comradeship, indifference to life, which the Japanese also display unusually but must be recognized."
Thus, by the beginning of the war, the Stalinist leadership was able to lay the foundations of a new society. Societies of knowledge, service and creation. It was a physically, intellectually and morally healthy society. These were people who loved their socialist homeland, ready to lay down their lives for it. Many did so. Therefore, the all-European hordes led by Hitler did not win, did not take Moscow, Leningrad and Stalingrad. And Russian red banners were raised in Warsaw, Bucharest, Budapest, Vienna, Sofia, Königsberg, Berlin and Prague.
