One of the most important events in the history of Russia in the 20th century for national self-awareness is the Great Patriotic War - sacred for all Russians. Actions to destroy its generalized image and associated symbols is one of the information operations of the Cold War against the Soviet Union.
The USSR collapsed, but the information war of the West against Russia in this direction continues into the 21st century. These actions are aimed at belittling the greatness of the Soviet Union and its successor Russia as a victorious country and destroying the bonds within the victorious people.
FALSIFIERS OF VICTORY
It is significant that back in August 1943, Jan Christian Smuts (Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa in 1939-1948 and Field Marshal of the British Army), one of Winston Churchill's closest associates, speaking about the course of the war, expressed his concerns to him regarding its conduct: “We can certainly fight better, and comparison with Russia may become less disadvantageous for us. It should seem to an ordinary person that Russia is winning the war. If this impression persists, what will be our position in the international arena after, in comparison with the position of Russia? Our position in the international arena can change dramatically, and Russia can become the diplomatic master of the world. This is undesirable and unnecessary and would have very bad consequences for the British Commonwealth of Nations. If we do not come out of this war on equal terms, our position will be inconvenient and dangerous …"
One of the latest proofs of the information war is the declaration of solidarity of the parliaments of Ukraine, Poland and Lithuania. On October 20, 2016, at the same time, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine and the Seim of Poland adopted a declaration on the events of World War II, where Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were responsible for its beginning. And if so, then the events that interpret the history of the war following the results of the Nuremberg Tribunal should be revised, and symbols and monuments reminiscent of the exploits of the Soviet people in the fight against Nazism should be destroyed.
Unfortunately, a part of our oppositional liberal intelligentsia, which denies the exploits of 28 Panfilovites, Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya and other symbols of the selfless struggle against the German invaders, has also been saturated with this poison. The famous Kyrgyz and Russian writer Chingiz Aitmatov in his book "Brand of Kassandra" (1994) described the war in the following way: "Two heads of a physiologically united monster grappled in confrontation for life and death." The USSR for them is "the era of Stalingitler or, on the contrary, Hitlerstalin", and this is "their internecine war."
Meanwhile, the Russian scientist Sergei Kara-Murza in his book "Soviet Civilization" emphasizes that in a review of German literature about Stalingrad, the German historian Hettling writes: on the part of the German Reich, the war was deliberately conceived and waged as an aggressive war of extermination along racial lines; secondly, it was initiated not only by Hitler and the Nazi leadership - a significant role in unleashing the war was also played by the top of the Wehrmacht and representatives of private business."
Best of all, the German writer Heinrich Belle, the Nobel laureate in literature, expressed his view of the war in his last work, in fact, a testament, “A Letter to My Sons”: “… I have not the slightest reason to complain about the Soviet Union. The fact that I was ill there several times, was wounded there, is inherent in the "nature of things", which in this case is called war, and I always understood: we were not invited there."
FAMOUS BATTLE EPISODE
The destruction of the image of the Great Patriotic War, undoubtedly, cannot occur without the discretization of its symbols. Under the guise of seeking the truth, both the events of the war and the exploits of its participants are interpreted in different ways. One of such heroic events, which is reflected in our and Western literature, is the sinking on January 30, 1945 by the Soviet submarine "S-13" under the command of Captain 3rd Rank Alexander Marinesko of the liner "Wilhelm Gustloff" in the Danzig Bay. We call this famous combat episode "the attack of the century", while the Germans consider it the largest naval disaster, almost even more terrible than the sinking of the Titanic. In Germany "Gustloff" is a symbol of catastrophe, and in Russia it is a symbol of our military victories.
Alexander Marinesko is one of the figures of the period of the Great Patriotic War, which still causes unabated controversy, since it is fanned by many myths and legends. Undeservedly forgotten, and then returned from oblivion - on May 5, 1990 A. I. Marinesko was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. Monuments to Marinesko and his crew were erected in Kaliningrad, Kronstadt, St. Petersburg and Odessa. His name is included in the "Golden Book of St. Petersburg".
Here is how A. I. Marinesko in his article “Attacks the S-13” (Neva magazine No. 7 for 1968), Admiral of the Soviet Union Fleet Nikolai Gerasimovich Kuznetsov, People's Commissar and Commander-in-Chief of the USSR Navy from 1939 to 1947: “History knows many cases when heroic deeds committed on the battlefield, they remain in the shadows for a long time and only their descendants appreciate them. It also happens that during the war years, large-scale events are not given due importance, reports about them are questioned and lead people to surprise and admiration much later. Such a fate befell the Baltic ace - submariner Marinesko A. I. Alexander Ivanovich is no longer alive. But his feat will forever remain in the memory of Soviet sailors."
He further notes that “I personally learned about the sinking of a large German ship in the Danzig Bay … only a month after the Crimean conference. Against the background of everyday victories, this event, apparently, was not given much importance. But even then, when it became known that the Gustlav was sunk by the S-13 submarine, the command did not dare to present A. Marinesko to the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. In the complex and restless nature of the C-13 commander, high heroism, desperate courage coexisted with many shortcomings and weaknesses. Today he could accomplish a heroic feat, and tomorrow he could be late for his ship, preparing to go on a combat mission, or in some other way violate military discipline."
It is no exaggeration to say that his name is also widely known worldwide. A bust of A. I. Marinesco.
As N. G. Kuznetsov, a participant in the Potsdam and Yalta conferences, at the beginning of February 1945, the governments of the allied powers gathered in Crimea to discuss measures to ensure the final defeat of Nazi Germany and outline the paths of the post-war peace.
“At the very first meeting in the Livadia Palace in Yalta, Churchill asked Stalin: when will Soviet troops capture Danzig, where are a large number of German submarines under construction and ready-made? He asked to speed up the seizure of this port.
The concern of the British prime minister was understandable. Britain's military efforts and the supply of its population depended largely on shipping. However, wolf packs continued to rampage on sea communications. Danzig was one of the main nests of the fascist submarine pirates. There was also a German diving school, for which the liner "Wilhelm Gustlav" served as a floating barracks.
BATTLE FOR ATLANTIC
For the British, allies of the USSR in the battle against Nazi Germany, the Battle of the Atlantic was decisive for the entire course of the war. Winston Churchill in his book "The Second World War" gives the following assessment of the loss of the ship's crew. In 1940, merchant ships with a total displacement of 4 million tons were lost, and in 1941 - more than 4 million tons. In 1942, after the United States became allies of Great Britain, almost 8 million tons of ships were sunk from the total increased tonnage of allied ships … Until the end of 1942, German submarines sank more ships than the Allies could build. By the end of 1943, the increase in tonnage finally surpassed the total losses at sea, and in the second quarter the losses of German submarines surpassed their construction for the first time. Subsequently, the moment came when the losses of enemy submarines in the Atlantic exceeded the losses in merchant ships. But this, Churchill emphasizes, came at the cost of a long and bitter struggle.
German submariners also smashed the caravans of allied transports, delivering military equipment and materials to Murmansk under Lend-Lease. The notorious PQ-17 convoy from 36 vessels lost 24 tanks, 210 aircraft, 3350 vehicles and 99 316 tons of cargo from submarine and aviation attacks.
In World War II, Germany, instead of using raiders - ships of the surface fleet - switched to unrestricted submarine warfare (uneingeschränkter U-Boot-Krieg), when submarines began to sink civilian merchant ships without warning and did not try to save the crews of these ships. In fact, the pirate motto was adopted: "Drown them all." At the same time, the commander of the German submarine fleet, Vice Admiral Karl Dennitz, developed the tactics of "wolf packs", when attacks by submarines on convoys were carried out by a group of submarines simultaneously. Karl Doenitz also organized a supply system for submarines directly in the ocean, away from bases.
To avoid submarine pursuit by Allied anti-submarine forces, on September 17, 1942, Doenitz issued the order Triton Zero, or Laconia-Befehl, which forbade submarine commanders from making any attempt to rescue the crews and passengers of sunken ships and ships.
Until September 1942, after the attack, German submarines somehow provided assistance to the sailors of sunken ships. In particular, on September 12, 1942, the submarine U-156 sank the British transport ship Lakonia and assisted in the rescue of the crew and passengers. On September 16, four submarines (one Italian), carrying several hundred survivors, were attacked by American planes, whose pilots knew that the Germans and Italians were rescuing the British.
The "wolf packs" of Doenitz's submarines inflicted heavy losses on the Allied convoys. At the beginning of the war, the German submarine fleet was the dominant force in the Atlantic. Great Britain defended its transport shipping, vital to the metropolis, with great exertion. In the first half of 1942, losses of Allied transport from "wolf packs" of submarines reached the maximum number of 900 ships (with a displacement of 4 million tons). For the entire 1942, 1664 Allied vessels (with a displacement of 7,790,697 tons) were sunk, of which 1160 were submarines.
In 1943, a turning point came - for every Allied ship sunk, the German submarine began to lose one submarine. In total, 1,155 submarines were built in Germany, of which 644 units were lost in combat. (67%). Submarines of that time could not stay under water for a long time, they were constantly attacked by planes and ships of the allied fleets on their way to the Atlantic. German submarines still managed to break through to the heavily guarded convoys. But it was already much more difficult for them to do this, despite the technical equipment with their own radars, reinforced with anti-aircraft artillery weapons, and when attacking ships - with homing acoustic torpedoes. However, in 1945, despite the agony of the Hitlerite regime, the submarine war was still going on.
WHAT REALLY HAPPENED ON JANUARY 30, 1945
In January 1945, the Soviet army was rapidly advancing westward, in the direction of Konigsberg and Danzig. Hundreds of thousands of Germans, fearing retribution for the atrocities of the Nazis, became refugees and moved to the port city of Gdynia - the Germans called it Gotenhafen. On January 21, Gross Admiral Karl Doenitz gave the order: "All available German ships must save everything that can be saved from the Soviets." The officers were ordered to relocate submarine cadets and their military property, and in any vacant nook of their ships - to place refugees, and primarily women and children. Operation Hannibal was the largest evacuation of the population in maritime history: over two million people were transported by sea to the west.
Built in 1937, the Wilhelm Gustloff, named after a murdered Hitler associate in Switzerland, was one of the finest German liners. The ten-deck liner with a displacement of 25,484 tons seemed to them, like the Titanic in its time, unsinkable. A magnificent cruise ship with a cinema and a swimming pool served as the pride of the Third Reich. It was intended to demonstrate to the whole world the achievements of Nazi Germany. Hitler himself participated in the launching of the ship, on which there was his personal cabin. For the Hitlerite cultural leisure organization "Strength through Joy", the liner transported tourists to Norway and Sweden for a year and a half, and with the outbreak of World War II it became a floating barracks for cadets of the 2nd training diving division.
On January 30, 1945, the Gustloff departed for its last voyage from Gothenhaven. German sources differ on how many refugees and soldiers were on board. As for the refugees, until 1990 the figure was almost constant, since many of the survivors of that tragedy lived in the GDR. According to their testimony, the number of refugees rose to 10 thousand people. As for the military on this flight, the latest sources say about a figure within one and a half thousand people. The passenger assistants were involved in the counting, one of them was Officer Heinz Schön, who after the war became the chronicler of the death of "Gustloff" and the author of documentary books on the topic, including "The Gustloff Catastrophe" and "SOS - Wilhelm Gustloff".
Shen describes in detail the story of the ship's sinking. At the end of January, a snow storm raged over Danzing Bay. Work was in full swing in Gotenhafen day and night. The advanced units of the Red Army, relentlessly moving westward, caused an unprecedented panic, the Nazis hastily removed the looted property, dismantled the machines at the factories. And the rumble of Soviet guns was getting closer and closer.
"Wilhelm Gustloff", standing at the quay wall, receives an order to take on board 4 thousand people to transfer them to Kiel. And the liner is designed to carry 1,800 passengers. In the early morning of January 25, a stream of military and civilians poured onto the ship. People who have been waiting for transport for several days are storming the place. Formally, everyone entering the ship must have a special pass, but in reality, Hitler's dignitaries are randomly loaded onto the ship, saving their skin, officers of the navy, SS and police - all those whose earth is burning under their feet.
January 29. In Gdynia, the roar of Soviet Katyushas is heard more and more, but the Gustloff continues to stand on the coast. There are already about 6 thousand on board.people, but hundreds of people continue to storm the ladder.
January 30, 1945 … Despite all the efforts of the crew, the passages could not be cleared. Only one room is not occupied - Hitler's apartment. But when the family of the burgomaster of Gdynia, consisting of 13 people, appears, she also studies. At 10 o'clock the order comes - to leave the port …
Midnight is approaching. The sky is covered with snow clouds. The moon is hiding behind them. Heinz Shen goes down to the cabin, pours a glass of brandy. Suddenly, the entire hull of the ship shudders, three torpedoes hit the side …
The Wilhelm Gustloff is slowly sinking into the water. To calm down, they say from the bridge that the liner ran aground … The ship is gradually sinking to a depth of sixty meters. Finally, the last command is heard: "Save yourself, who can!" Few were lucky: the approaching ships saved only about a thousand people.
Nine ships participated in their rescue. People tried to escape on life rafts and lifeboats, but most survived only a few minutes in the icy water. In total, according to Shen, 1239 people survived, of which half, 528 people - the personnel of German submariners, 123 auxiliary female personnel of the Navy, 86 wounded, 83 crew members and only 419 refugees. Thus, about 50% of the submariners survived and only 5% of the rest of the passengers. It must be admitted that most of the victims were women and children, the most vulnerable in any war. That is why in some German circles they are trying to classify Marinesco's actions as "war crimes".
In this respect, the novel The Trajectory of the Crab, which was published in Germany in 2002 and almost immediately became a bestseller, by a native of Danzing and Nobel laureate Gunther Grass, based on the death of Wilhelm Gustloff, is interesting in this respect. The essay is written witty, but it sounds, interrupting all the others, with one leitmotif: an attempt to bring the actions of Hitler's Europe and their winner - the Soviet Union - on the same plane, proceeding from the tragedy of the war. The author describes the brutal scene of the death of the passengers of the "Gustloff" - dead children "floating upside down" because of the bulky lifejackets they were wearing. The reader is led to the idea that the submarine "S-13" under the command of A. I. Marinesco sank the liner with refugees on board, allegedly fleeing the atrocities and rapes of the advancing Red Army soldiers, thirsting for revenge. And Marinesco is one of the representatives of this impending "horde of barbarians". The author also draws attention to the fact that all four torpedoes prepared for the attack had inscriptions - "For the Motherland", "For the Soviet people", "For Leningrad" and "For Stalin." By the way, the latter just could not get out of the torpedo tube. The author describes in some detail the entire biography of Marinesco. It is emphasized that before the campaign he was summoned for interrogation by the NKVD for offenses, and only going to sea saved him from the tribunal. His characterization as a person with weaknesses, annoyingly repeated in Grasse's book, inspires the reader on an emotional level with the idea that the attack on "Gustloff" looks like a "war crime", such a shadow is thrown, although there is not the slightest reason for this. Yes, he drank not only Narzan and loved to hang around with women - which of the men is not sinful in this?
What kind of ship did Marinesco sink to the bottom? The question here is much deeper - in the tragedy of the war. Even the most just war is inhuman, because civilians are the first to suffer from it. According to the inexorable laws of war, Marinesco sank a warship. "Wilhelm Gustloff" had the corresponding signs: anti-aircraft weapons and the flag of the German Navy, and also obeyed military discipline. In accordance with the UN maritime convention, it falls under the definition of a warship. And it is not Marinesco's fault that he sank the ship, on which, in addition to the military, there were also refugees. The huge blame for the tragedy lies with the German command, which was guided by military interests and did not think about civilians. At a meeting at Hitler's headquarters on naval issues on January 31, 1945, the Commander-in-Chief of the German Navy stated that “from the very beginning it was clear that with such active transportations there should be losses. Losses are always very heavy, but, fortunately, they have not increased."
Until now, we use data, in contrast to Shen's figures, that 3,700 submariners died on the Gustloff, who could have manned 70 medium-tonnage submarine crews. This figure, taken from the message of the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet of February 2, 1945, appeared in the award list of A. I. Marinesko for the title of Hero of the Soviet Union in February 1945. But VRID of the commander of the submarine brigade of the Red Banner Baltic Fleet, Captain 1st Rank L. A. Kournikov reduced the level of the award to the Order of the Red Banner. A tenacious legend, created in the 1960s with the light hand of the writer Sergei Sergeevich Smirnov, who unveiled at that time the unknown pages of the war. But Marinesko was not "Hitler's personal enemy", and the three-day mourning in Germany for the death of "Gustloff" was not declared. One of the arguments is that thousands more people were awaiting evacuation by sea, and the news of the disaster would have caused panic. Mourning was declared for Wilhelm Gustloff himself, the leader of the National Socialist Party in Switzerland, who was killed in 1936, and his murderer, student David Frankfurter, a Jew by birth, was called the personal enemy of the Fuhrer.
ACTIONS OF SUBMARANTS, ABOUT WHOM TO DISCUSS TO THIS TIME
In 2015, to the 100th anniversary of the birth of A. I. Marinesko published a book by M. E. Morozova, A. G. Svisyuk, V. N. Ivaschenko “Submariner No. 1 Alexander Marinesko. Documentary portrait "from the series" On the front line. The Truth About War. " We must pay tribute, the authors collected a large number of documents of that time and made a detailed analysis of this event of the Great Patriotic War.
At the same time, reading their analysis, you experience conflicting feelings. The authors seem to admit that it is "quite justified to award the Golden Star to a commander with two major victories" in this campaign, "if not for one, but a huge but." "And the command of the submarine brigade of the Red Banner Baltic Fleet in 1945 managed to sort out this difficult issue, having made the right decision." By "but" they mean exactly those weaknesses that are cited in the said publication and described in his story by Gunther Grass.
Also, the authors, recognizing the high risk of actions and the activity of the S-13, question the heroic actions of the submarine's crew, believing that “the general conditions of the then situation are perceived as quite simple, and the tactical situation at the time of the attack on the Gustlof was even unprecedentedly easy. … That is, from the point of view of the demonstrated skill and dedication, this particular case is very difficult to classify as outstanding”.
"Attack of the Century" has been analyzed in detail by experts. Speaking about the S-13 attack, it is worth noting first of all that almost the entire operation was carried out mainly on the surface and in the coastal region. This was a great risk, since the submarine had been in this position for a long time, and if discovered (and Danzing Bay is "home" for the Germans) it could most likely be destroyed. It is also worth mentioning the losses of the KBF here. In the Baltic, the most difficult theater of naval military operations, 49 of the 65 Soviet submarines that were in the fleet at the beginning of the war were lost for various reasons.
An interesting analysis was made at a meeting at Hitler's headquarters on January 31, 1945. In particular, it was indicated that due to the lack of escort forces, the fleet had to confine itself to the direct protection of convoys. The only actual means of anti-submarine defense were aircraft with radar installations, the very weapons that made it possible to paralyze the combat operations of their submarines. The Air Force reported that it lacks fuel and sufficient equipment for such operations. The Fuhrer ordered the Air Force command to deal with this issue.
The attack does not diminish the fact that the "Gustloff" left Gotenhafen without appropriate escort ahead of schedule, without waiting for the escort ships, since it was necessary to urgently transfer German submariners from the already surrounded East Prussia. The only ship in the escort was only the destroyer "Leve", which, moreover, with a 12-knot stroke, began to lag behind due to strong waves and a lateral north-westerly wind. A fatal role was played by the running lights, turned on on the "Gustloff" after a message was received that a detachment of German minesweepers was moving towards it - it was by these lights that Marinesco discovered the transport. To launch the attack, it was decided to overtake the liner on a parallel course in the surface position, take a position at the bow heading angles and release torpedoes. A long hourly overtaking of the Gustloff began. During the last half hour, the boat developed its almost maximum speed up to 18 knots, which it hardly did even during the commissioning trials in 1941. After that, the submarine laid down on a combat course, strictly perpendicular to the left side of the transport, and fired a three-torpedo salvo. About the subsequent maneuvers in the combat report of the commander of the submarine "S-13" Captain 3rd Rank Marinesco: "… Dodged an urgent immersion … 2 TFR (patrol ships) and 1 TSC (minesweeper) found the submarine and began to pursue it. During the pursuit, 12 depth charges were dropped. Broke away from the pursuit of ships. He had no damage from depth charges”.
Unfortunately, domestic submarines did not have modern electronic detection equipment by the beginning of the war. The periscope remained practically the main source of information about the surface situation at the submarine. The Mars type sound direction finders that were in service made it possible by ear to determine the direction to the noise source with an accuracy of plus or minus 2 degrees. The operating range of the equipment with good hydrology did not exceed 40 kb. The commanders of the German, British and American submarines had sonar stations at their disposal. German submariners, with good hydrology, detected a single transport in the noise direction finding mode at a distance of up to 100 kb, and already from a distance of 20 kb they could get a range to it in the "Echo" mode. All this, of course, directly influenced the effectiveness of the use of domestic submarines, required great training from the personnel. At the same time, among submariners, like no one else, one person objectively dominates in the crew, a kind of God in a separately taken confined space. Thus, the personality of the commander and the fate of the submarine are something whole. During the war years, out of 229 commanders who participated in military campaigns, 135 (59%) of the 229 commanders who participated in military campaigns at least once launched a torpedo attack, but only 65 (28%) of them managed to hit targets with torpedoes.
The submarine "S-13" in one cruise sank the military transport "Wilhelm Gustloff" with a displacement of 25,484 tons with three torpedoes, and the military transport "General von Steuben", 14,660 tons with two torpedoes. By the decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR dated April 20, 1945 submarine "S-13" was awarded the Order of the Red Banner. With its heroic actions, the S-13 brought the end of the war closer.
