The theory of "stolen victory" or "stabbing in the back" is the most persistent and dangerous myth of the 20th and early 21st centuries. The term "stabbing in the back" was first used on December 17, 1918 in the New Zurich Newspaper. The same version of Germany's defeat in the First World War in November-December 1919 was confirmed by both commanders of the German army: Erich Ludendorff and Paul von Hindenburg. In 1925, Social Democrat publicist Martin Gruber called the theory of "stabbing in the back" fiction. Nationalist Kossman sued Gruber and won the case. Gruber was forced to pay a fine of 3,000 Reichsmarks. The myth of the stab in the back of Social Democrats and Jews was constantly imposed by the Nazi media and, it should be noted, not without success. In the 1930s – 1940s, the overwhelming majority of Germans believed in a stab in the back.
Was the help of allies significant
In the summer of 1918, American units arrived on the Western Front, and the Allies went on the offensive. In September, the Entente troops in the Western European theater had 211 infantry and 10 cavalry divisions against 190 German infantry divisions. By the end of August, the number of American troops in France was about 1.5 million people, and by the beginning of November it exceeded 2 million people.
At the cost of huge losses, the Allied forces in three months managed to advance on a front about 275 km wide to a depth of 50 to 80 km. By November 1, 1918, the front line began on the coast of the North Sea, a few kilometers west of Antwerp, then went through Mons, Sedan and further to the Swiss border, that is, until the last day, the war was exclusively in the Belgian and French territories.
During the Allied offensive in July-November 1918, the Germans lost 785, 7 thousand people killed, wounded and captured, the French - 531 thousand people, the British - 414 thousand people, in addition, the Americans lost 148 thousand people. Thus, the losses of the allies exceeded the losses of the Germans by 1, 4 times. So in order to reach Berlin, the Allies would lose all their ground forces, including the Americans.
In 1915-1916, the Germans had no tanks, but then the German command was preparing a big tank pogrom in late 1918 - early 1919. In 1918, German industry produced 800 tanks, but most of them did not manage to reach the front. The troops began to receive anti-tank rifles and large-caliber machine guns, which easily pierced the armor of British and French tanks. Mass production of 37 mm anti-tank guns began.
During the First World War, not a single German dreadnought (battleship of the latest type) was killed. In November 1918, in terms of the number of dreadnoughts and battle cruisers, Germany was 1, 7 times inferior to England, but the German battleships were superior to the allied ones in the quality of artillery, fire control systems, unsinkable ships, etc. All this is well demonstrated in the famous Jutland battle on May 31 - June 1, 1916. Let me remind you that the battle had a draw, but the British losses significantly exceeded the German ones.
In 1917, the Germans built 87 submarines, and excluded 72 submarines from the list due to losses, technical reasons, navigational accidents and other reasons. In 1918, 86 boats were built, and 81 were excluded from the lists. There were 141 boats in service. At the time of the signing of the surrender, 64 boats were under construction.
As an eyewitness, Prince Obolensky, wrote, "in April 1918, German troops entered Sevastopol with a ceremonial march, and in November they left, husking seeds."
ANTANTA'S BLUFF
Both Russia and Germany were drawn into the war because of the stupidity of their monarchs. The Russian-German border, established in 1814, was the most peaceful for 100 years and suited both sides. The far-sighted politicians of both states did not want to have a violent and unpredictable pancy in full. Well, after the outbreak of the war, the media of both countries "drew off with taste", describing the atrocities of the Russian and Teutonic barbarians.
The grandiose bluff of the Entente also played an important role in the surrender of Germany. On January 8, 1918, President Woodrow Wilson proposed a 14-point peace plan. According to him, Germany was supposed to give France Alsace and Lorraine, the creation of a Polish state was envisaged, but in what territories it is not clear. All states, both Germany and the Entente, had to immediately after the conclusion of peace reduce their armed forces to the "maximum minimum", and so on.
In words, the Entente supported this plan. Millions of Germans also agreed to it. I will note that war fatigue was in all countries, including the Entente. Let us recall the mass shootings of thousands of French military personnel in 1917. And after the war, the peoples of England and France, in principle, did not want to participate even in wars with a weak enemy. Speaking for the withdrawal of British troops from Russia in July 1919, Premier Lloyd George declared that "if the war continues, we will receive Council on the Thames." England and France in 1920-1922 did not dare to send troops against the Turkish general Mustafa Kemal and shamefully fled from Constantinople and the Strait zone.
Germany accepted Wilson's plan, withdrew its troops from France and Belgium, and began to disarm. And it was then that the Entente abruptly changed its policy. In April 1919, the Treaty of Versailles was signed, according to which Germany was to give up almost a third of its territory. The German army was reduced to 100 thousand people. Moreover, she was not supposed to have tanks, armored vehicles, any aircraft, including even messengers, anti-aircraft, anti-tank and heavy artillery. The Germans were obliged to tear down all their fortifications. In Germany, the production of aircraft and even powerful radio stations was prohibited. For 30 years, Germany had to pay a huge contribution to the Entente.
Such chaos can only be compared with the attitude of the Western powers towards Russia in 1991–2016. At first, the West promised that NATO would not expand eastward and would not even go to the former GDR, which had united with the FRG. Who would then have believed that American planes, tanks and missiles would end up on the eastern borders of the Baltic states, in Poland and Romania?
I am sure that if the West in October 1918 and in the summer of 1991 honestly told the whole truth about its future plans, then the entire German nation would fight to the death on the Western Front, and I do not exclude that Paris would be taken before the onset of 1919. Well, as for the Russian people, it is not difficult to guess what fate would then await Messrs. Gorbachev, Yeltsin, Kozyrev, Gaidar, etc., as well as all Baltic and Western Ukrainian nationalists.
HISTORICAL IGNORANCE
It is noteworthy that in Russia in 1917-1922, as well as later, the theory of "stabbing in the back" and "stolen victory" did not spread. And similar fantasy appeared only after 1991. Naturally, the newly emerged theories were politically motivated. The goal is to discredit the communists, the Soviet way of life and the desire to impose a market economy "with an inhuman face" on the country.
The certain success of the theory of "stolen victory" is based on the historical ignorance of a significant part of our citizens, who automatically take any numbers and facts for truth, without trying to verify them.
So, a certain E. Trifonov declares: “During the First World War, industry mastered the production of fundamentally new types of weapons, such as the Rosenberg trench cannon, Lender's anti-aircraft gun, mortar (they were then called bomb throwers) … At the end of 1916, Russian industry began to produce the Fedorov assault rifle - the only one in the world a successful machine model at that time."
As they say, at least stand, at least fall. By August 1914, the Russian army had neither battalion nor regimental artillery, and, accordingly, their materiel. Heavy artillery (it was then called siege) was completely disbanded in 1910-1911, its materiel was partially sent to the fortresses, but mainly for scrap. I will note that by that time in the siege and fortress artillery we had only guns of the models of 1877, 1867 and 1838. Their caliber did not exceed 6 inches (152 mm), with the exception, of course, of two- and five-pound mortars of the 1838 model.
The artillery commander, Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich, promised to recreate the heavy artillery sometime between 1917 and 1921.
Already in 1914, trench warfare began, and there was no artillery for waging it at all. The holes were plugged with whatever they could. And so engineer Rosenberg took a 37-mm training barrel, used for coastal and naval guns, and put it on a makeshift hard wooden carriage that did not even have a swing mechanism. So we got a trench gun.
Shkilena's Petrograd plant mastered the production of 6-pounder mortars, created by Baron Kegorn in 1674. (This is not a typo!)
But then the mass production of mortars of the French model began: 89-mm Aazen, 58-mm FR and others; German model: 9 cm GR. On the basis of the 17-cm German Erhardt mortar model of 1912, the Putilov plant in 1915 began production of its 152-mm mortar.
“Out of patriotic motives,” our entrepreneurs began producing all kinds of primitive mortars and bombs, which posed a threat exclusively to their own servants. All this was willingly bought by the rear ranks of the War Ministry, and at the front they refused even to accept them. According to the head of GAU, General Alexei Manikovsky, by July 1916, 2,866 mortars had accumulated in the rear warehouses, which the troops abandoned.
The 76-mm Lender anti-aircraft gun had good TTD, but was produced in extremely small quantities: 1915 - 12 units, 1916 - 26, 1917 - 110 and 1918 - none. Moreover, the first guns of Lender hit the front only in the summer of 1917, and not because of the negligence of the generals, but because they all went to create the air defense of Tsarskoe Selo. Note that until 1917, not a single German aircraft could reach Tsarskoye Selo, and Lender's anti-aircraft guns had to fire exclusively at their own aircraft. The gendarmes received information that the military conspirators were preparing to liquidate the tsar with a bomb dropped from an airplane.
Well, the vaunted Fedotov automatic rifle could not become widespread in the Russian army, just because it was designed for a 6, 5-mm Japanese cartridge. In 1923, this rifle (automatic) was launched in a small series, but production was stopped the following year. "Testing of machine guns in the troops has shown that these weapons are too delicate for combat service and in cases of dust and pollution, the machine guns refuse to work," D. N. Bolotin "History of Soviet small arms and cartridges."
By 1917, 60% of the machine guns on the Eastern Front were imported. Russia did not produce any other machine guns, except for the easel 7, 62-mm maxim. All 100% of light and aircraft machine guns were purchased abroad.
In the Entente countries and in Germany, light and large-caliber (12, 7-13, 1 mm) machine guns were launched into mass production, and in Germany they even adopted a double-barreled aviation machine gun of the Gast system, which was 40 (!) Years ahead of domestic weapons. In tsarist Russia, neither large-caliber nor light machine guns were produced. What machine guns! We didn't even produce pistols, but only one revolver, a revolver. In 1900-1914, Russian officers at their own expense bought Mauser, Lugger, Browning and other pistols of German, Belgian and American production.
THOUGHTING OFFICERS WERE OUT OF HONOR
To our great regret, in the Russian army since 1825, independent and thinking officers were not allowed to move. You never know what the new Orlovs, Potemkins and Denis Davydovs can do! The Romanovs remembered well that from 1725 to 1801, we had elected emperors, and the election campaigns were carried out by officers of the guards regiments.
In 1904-1905, Russian generals and officers miserably lost the war to the Japanese, in 1914-1917 they lost the war to the Germans, and in 1918-1920 they outright lost the war to their own people, despite thousands of guns, tanks and airplanes from the Entente. Finally, finding themselves in exile, tens of thousands of officers climbed all over the world in more and more fights - in Finland, Albania, Spain, South America, China, etc. Yes, thousands of them showed courage and were awarded. But who was given command not only of a division, but at least of a regiment? Or did the villains-Bolsheviks interfere there too?
But in the history of Western Europe, almost a quarter of the famous generals were emigrants. In Russia, about half of the field marshals were emigrants, remember Minich, Barclay de Tolly, and others.
Who will start to argue, I will overwhelm with examples. Why were there no machine-gun carts in the fields of Manchuria? Maxim machine guns have been in service for 30 years, the carts themselves are a dime a dozen. And to combine them, you needed a fresh head, even if a drunken Makhnovist. Why coastal and naval guns in 1895-1912 had an elevation angle of 10-15 degrees and fired at the firing tables at 6 km, and theoretically at - 10 km. But the villains-Bolsheviks, having come to power, immediately lifted their trunks by 45-50 degrees and the same shells began to shoot at 26 km.
What was the morale of the soldiers? They simply had nothing to fight for! The tsar and even more so the tsarina are ethnic Germans. Over the past 20 years, they have spent a total of at least two years in Germany with relatives. The Empress's brother, General Ernst of Hesse, is one of the leaders of the German General Staff.
The Russian people are responsive to the pain of others, and the propaganda of aid to the Slav brothers in the first weeks of the war was successful. But in October 1915 Bulgaria declared war on Russia, or rather, as it was declared, on the "Rasputin clique".
The Russian soldiers understood perfectly well that Wilhelm II had no intention of capturing Ryazan and Vologda, and the fate of the outskirts such as Finland or Poland was of little concern to the workers and peasants. But what can we say about the peasants, if the tsar himself and his ministers did not know what to do with Poland and Galicia even if the war ended successfully.
German airplanes dropped leaflets with caricatures on the Russian trenches - the Kaiser measures a huge 800-kilogram projectile with a centimeter, and Nicholas II, in the same position, measures Rasputin's penis. The entire army knew about the adventures of the "elder". And if the Germans used 42-centimeter mortars only in the most important sectors of the front, then almost all of our soldiers saw craters from 21-centimeter mortars.
The wounded, returning to the ranks, zemgussars and nurses told the soldiers how the gentlemen walked to the fullest in the restaurants of Moscow and Petrograd.
The massacres of the officers of the Baltic Fleet sailors began not in October 1917, but on the day of the abdication of Emperor Nicholas II. Kronstadt and the Baltic Fleet were already out of the control of the central authorities in April 1917. On the whole, the Russian army became incapable of combat by the summer of 1917. By this time, all of Central Russia was illuminated by the glow of the fires of noble estates, and the landowners' land was expropriated. In the same summer of 1917, the formation of national units began in Finland, the Baltic states, Ukraine and the Caucasus. It is clear that the national units were not going to fight the Germans - what a victory there could be!
SO WHO IMPLEMENTED THE DEVELOPMENT
In all the books of the head of GAU Alexei Manikovsky and his deputy Yevgeny Barsukov, the famous gunsmith Fedorov, it was admitted that the cost of high-explosive shells and shrapnel of the same caliber, produced by private and state-owned factories, differed by one and a half or two times.
The average profit of private industrial enterprises in 1915 compared with 1913 increased by 88%, and in 1916 - by 197%, that is, almost doubled. However, industrial production, including defense plants, began to decline in 1916. For the first 7 months of 1916, the transportation of goods by rail amounted to 48, 1% of the required.
In 1915-1916, the food issue became sharply aggravated. Until 1914, Russia was the second largest exporter of grain after the United States, and Germany was the world's main importer of food. But the German "Michel" until November 1918 regularly fed the army and the country, often giving up to 90% of the agricultural products produced. But the Russian peasant did not want to. Already in 1915, due to the inflation of the ruble and the narrowing of the flow of goods from the city, the peasants began to hide grain "until better times." Indeed, what is the point of giving grain at strictly fixed prices for "wooden" rubles (during the First World War, the ruble lost its gold content), for which there was practically nothing to buy? Meanwhile, if the grain is skillfully stored, then its economic value is preserved for 6 years, and the technological value - 10–20 or more years, that is, within 6 years most of the sown grain will germinate, and it can be eaten in 20 years. …
Finally, the grain can be used for moonshine or for feeding livestock and poultry. On the other hand, neither the army, nor industry, nor the population of large cities can exist without bread. As a result of the fact, as Russian historians point out, that "about a billion poods of grain reserves could not be transferred to consumption areas," the Minister of Agriculture Rittich in the fall of 1916 "even decided on an extreme measure: he announced a compulsory appropriation of grain." However, by 1917, only 4 million poods were practically unlocked. For comparison, the Bolsheviks collected 160-180 million poods a year for the surplus appropriation.
Mikhail Pokrovsky, in the collection of articles "Imperialist War", published in 1934, cited the following data: "In the winter season, Moscow needs 475 thousand poods of firewood, 100 thousand poods of coal, 100 thousand poods of oil residues and 15 thousand poods every day. peat. Meanwhile, in January, before the frost began, an average of 430,000 poods of firewood, 60,000 poods of coal and 75,000 poods of oil were brought to Moscow every day, so that the shortage in terms of firewood was 220,000 poods daily; Since January 17, the arrival of firewood in Moscow has dropped to 300-400 wagons per day, that is, to half of the norm set by the regional committee, and almost no oil and coal have been received at all. Fuel supplies for the winter at factories and plants in Moscow were prepared for about two months' demand, but due to the shortage of supplies, which began in November, these supplies were reduced to nothing. Due to the lack of fuel, many enterprises, even those working for defense, have already stopped or will soon stop. Centrally heated houses have only 50% of fuel, and the wood-burning storages are empty … the street gas lighting has completely stopped."
And here is what is indicated in the multivolume History of the Civil War in the USSR, published in the 1930s: “Two years after the start of the war, coal mining in Donbass was struggling to maintain its pre-war level, despite the increase in workers from 168 thousand in 1913. up to 235 thousand in 1916. Before the war, the monthly production per worker in the Donbass was 12, 2 tons, in 1915/16 - 11, 3, and in the winter of 1916 - 9, 26 tons”.
DISTRIBUTED THE GOLD STOCK
With the outbreak of war, Russian military agents (as military attachés were called then), generals and admirals rushed around the world to buy weapons. Of the purchased equipment, about 70% of the artillery systems were outdated and were suitable only for museums, but only England and Japan, Russia paid 505.3 tons of gold for this trash, that is, about 646 million rubles. In total, 1051 million gold rubles worth of gold was exported. After the February Revolution, the Provisional Government also made its contribution to the export of gold abroad: literally on the eve of the October Revolution, it sent a consignment of gold to Sweden for the purchase of weapons in the amount of 4.85 million gold rubles, that is, about 3.8 tons of metal.
Could Russia have won the war in such a state? Let's fantasize and remove Masons, liberals and Bolsheviks from the political scene. So what would have happened to Russia in 1917-1918? Instead of a Masonic coup in 1917 or 1918, a terrible Russian revolt would have arisen.
The most surprising thing is that all the figures I have cited have been published in military literature for almost 100 years. Moreover, practically no changes were made, and it never occurred to anyone to dispute these figures.
But try to show the materials to E. Trifonov or N. Poklonskaya. They will not read them. If the facts contradict their fantasies, so much the worse for the facts themselves. Someone really needs the entire globe to enter the nebula of crooked mirrors.
Children are killed by bombs dropped from Russian planes in Aleppo, and are invulnerable to American bombs in Mosul.
The theory of "stolen victory" incites resentment and hatred in people and calls for revenge. Remember the reasoning of the Makhnovist in the film "Two Comrades Served":
- The Bolsheviks sold the revolution.
- Who did they sell to?
- To whom she is the tribe of the bull, that is also sold.
Nobody is interested in the details of the deal. The main thing is obvious: the fact of the sale and the party affiliation of the seller. And then it turned out that they, the villains, also stole the victory from the Russian people and immediately sold it to whom it was "tribna"!
