Not so long ago, the Voennoye Obozreniye website published an article on how in recent years there have been numerous attempts to link the strategy and tactics of warfare by the Soviet (Russian) army with unnecessary and unjustified sacrifices. They say that the Russian generals have only one tactic: to achieve victory at any cost. The saddest thing is that sometimes, even in school history textbooks by their authors, whole battles turn into examples of mindless bloodshed, which, according to the same authors, could have been avoided. It is difficult to say whether this can be considered a whole planned campaign, but the fact that there are suspiciously many such publications and materials is a fact.
Especially a lot of materials began to appear in which they try to revise the events of the Great Patriotic War. And, as you know, if today you subject individual historical episodes of the most terrible war in the history of mankind to doubts, then tomorrow its outcome will be easily adjusted to the level that someone needs.
One of the very battles in which many journalists, writers and historians see an example of unjustified bloodshed by the Soviet army is considered the battle on the outskirts of Berlin. Its official name is the storming of the Seelow Heights. This operation was carried out for three days under the command of G. K. Zhukov.
One of the main critics of Marshal Zhukov's actions on the Seelow Heights is the writer Vladimir Beshanov. Retired officer Beshanov (born, by the way, in 1962) is confident that the Seelow three-day assault (April 16-19, 1945) was an absolutely senseless undertaking on the part of Marshal Zhukov, since it led to numerous losses from the Soviet and Polish allies troops. In addition, Vladimir Beshanov believes that Zhukov did not even go for an operation, but for a primitive frontal assault, which allegedly shows that the marshal was rushing to Berlin at any cost to get ahead of his rival generals in order to get all the laurels of the winner. With these words Beshanov once spoke on the radio "Echo of Moscow" and, by the way, managed to find a large number of radio listeners supporting his personal point of view.
But it is not the position of the writer Beshanov that is surprising, but how quickly our attitude to this or that historical event or to this or that historical person can change immediately after the words we hear on the air. Like, if a retired naval officer said, then that was in fact: the bloodthirsty Zhukov literally, sorry, flooded onto Berlin, walking over the corpses of his own soldiers in order to curry favor with the Supreme Commander and receive another portion of orders on his chest. And this version was quickly picked up, starting to replicate with enviable regularity. New authors appeared who are also sure that Zhukov did not need to go ahead, but to let Konev take Berlin, and then jointly suppress the German armies concentrated on the Seelow Heights.
Now it is worthwhile to understand the "bloodthirstiness" of G. K. Zhukov on, as they say, with a cool head and without attempts to make a whole sensation out of a single historical event with the revelations of historical characters.
To begin with, it should be said that during the operation on the Seelow Heights, Soviet troops lost about 25,000 people. It seems that in three days these are really serious losses. However, very often the authors of these same 25,000 human losses, for some reason, immediately write down as irreparable losses. In fact, this number does not mean 25,000 killed at all. About 70% of the 25,000 discussed are wounded, who then, as they say, got into line. And how could the losses be lower with such an active onslaught, which was demonstrated by the Soviet troops.
The question is: why did Marshal Zhukov decide to strike at the Wehrmacht positions on the Seelow Heights from the north, but simply did not wait for Konev's armies from the West, which by that time could have occupied Berlin themselves. And the answer to this question was repeatedly given by Zhukov himself and military historians who are closely working on the topic of the Berlin operation. The thing is that Zhukov not only struck the Seelow Heights, but actually pulled back the main forces of the German troops. The whole German army (ninth) was first surrounded, and then destroyed even before the start of the battles for the capital of the Reich. If Zhukov had not undertaken this operation, then the same Konev would have had to face much larger Wehrmacht forces in Berlin itself than those that ended up there after Zhukov's Seelow strike. The few remnants of the 56th German Panzer Corps (about 12,500 out of 56,000 fighters) managed to break through to the German capital itself from the East, which stood guard at the Seelow Heights until the strike of Zhukov's armies.
It is safe to say that the indicated forces (12,500) were weak support for the German defenders of Berlin, and that is why the Soviet troops took the capital of the Third Reich quickly enough. One can imagine how the same 9th German Army would behave if they simply passed by it, rushing towards Berlin. She would simply change the vector of attack and hit Zhukov's armies either in the flank or in the rear, and Zhukov would have had much more losses. General Jodl spoke about this, in particular, at the Nuremberg trials. According to him, the German combat units expected precisely that Zhukov would lead the troops around and would not dare to strike at the front on the Seelow Heights. But Zhukov made a non-standard step, clearly confusing the cards of the Wehrmacht command. Such is the "primitive" (according to the writer Beshanov) move, which led to the defeat of an entire German army in just 3 days. By the way, in that operation, the German Army Group "Vistula" lost more than 12,300 people only killed. This means that some authors say that the troops of the Third Reich in any battle suffered minimal losses, and the troops of the Land of the Soviets washed themselves with their own blood …
The authors of critical articles directed towards Zhukov believe that the marshal himself should have been waiting for Konev, who would have taken Berlin without him: they say, the losses of Soviet troops would be minimal. However, it is completely incomprehensible why it was suddenly decided that Konev would take Berlin on his own. In the end, seeing that Zhukov remains in his positions, the same 9th Army of the Wehrmacht could have sent to Berlin not at all 12,500 "bayonets" weakened by the battles east of Berlin, but several times more and, as they say, fresher. And this would obviously delay the capture of the German capital itself, and, as a result, would increase the number of casualties on the part of the Soviet units.
It turns out that criticism of the actions of Marshal Zhukov during the Berlin operation is completely groundless and has no solid grounds. In the end, seeing oneself as strategists when a certain number of years separates from the historical event itself is much easier than making difficult decisions in the course of these events.
Let's hope that when creating history textbooks, the authors will rely on real historical facts, and not chase after a sensation. Trying to profit from the blood of your own ancestors is at least immoral, but by and large - criminal! It should be remembered that Russian schoolchildren today for the most part evaluate the course of history precisely according to paragraphs of textbooks, which means that no thought experiments and "author's versions" are simply inadmissible here.
