General Pavlov as responsible for all
Until now, the debates of researchers and all those who are interested in the military history about the events connected with the initial period of the Great Patriotic War. Especially everything connected with the disaster on the Western Front, which was created on the basis of the Western Special Military District, a disaster that has become one of the most tragic pages in the history of the initial period of the war. When literally during the first week, on June 28, Minsk and Bobruisk were captured by the enemy. To the west of the Belarusian capital, the 3 and 10 armies were surrounded, and the remnants of the 4 army were transferred to Berezina. The threat of a quick exit of mobile units of the enemy to the Dnieper and their breakthrough to Smolensk was created.The events developed rapidly, and already on July 4, on the way to Gomel, where the headquarters of the Western Front were located at that time, General of the Army D.Pavlov, the commander of the Western Front, was arrested. The arrest procedure was supervised personally by the head of the Red Army Political Propaganda Directorate, Army Commissioner 1, rank Mehlis, who was also appointed a member of the military council of the front. He was also instructed to determine the circle of persons from the commanding staff of the front, who together with the former commander were to appear before the court. As a result, in addition to Pavlov, the chief of staff of the front, Major General V.Ye. Major General A.T. Klimovskiy, Head of Communications Grigoriev, commander of the 4 Army, Major General A.A. Korobkov and a number of other military leaders. All of them were removed from their posts, and then put on trial by the military board of the Supreme Court of the USSR and shot.
Is still not clear and controversial characteristic of the military commander, whom Stalin entrusted at that time one of the most important military districts of the country? The district, which was the second in number of troops, and in importance of the strategic direction, perhaps even the first, who is General Pavlov? What do we know about this person, besides the fact that he did not cope with his duties as a commander, that he had lost control of the troops. As a result, the Red Army suffered an unprecedented heavy defeat. In total for 17 days from 625 thousand people of fighters and commanders, the Western Front lost about 420 thousands of personnel! As a result, Pavlov came under fast trial and execution.
Who is he, Dmitry G. Pavlov? Studying his biography, it is clear that there is nothing particularly prominent in it, an ordinary biography, like all military commanders of the time. Born into a peasant family, in World War I volunteered to the front. In the tsarist army he was promoted to senior non-commissioned officer. He was wounded in 1916 year and captured, released after the end of the war. From 1919, in the Red Army, during the Civil War from 1918 to 1920, he was a platoon commander, squadron, assistant regiment commander. Entered the VKP (b) in 1919 year. The same biography in Zhukov, Konev, Rokossovskogo.
Some researchers impute ignorance and lack of military education to Pavlov. However, from the biography it is clear that he graduated from the 24 th Omsk Infantry School named after the Comintern, the Military Academy. MV Frunze and academic courses at the Military Technical Academy, so education for those times is quite sufficient. Zhukov, for example, did not even have an academic education, but this did not prevent him from leading the General Staff of the Red Army.
An interesting fact from the biography of D. Pavlov. From November 1937 to June 1940 he headed the Armored Directorate of the Red Army, and during this very short time Dmitry Grigorievich showed himself to be a pretty good theorist of application tank troops and tanks on the battlefield. It was he who first announced the need for a radical revision of tank armament, Pavlov suggested that the infantry escort tanks, which at that time included the T-26, should be left to the infantry, and the T-28 and T-35 should be armed with a 76-mm cannon, in addition, to replace this two tanks, he proposed to develop a new heavy breakthrough tank. The main tank of the Red Army T-34 was also created on the instructions and requirements of the then head of the Red Army ABTV Corps Commander D. Pavlov.
A lot of controversy caused and continues to cause the decision to disband the tank corps in the Red Army before the beginning of the war, many believed that it was almost a betrayal. However, it is not so simple, it is interesting that D.Pavlov was one of the initiators of this decision. It was at his suggestion that instead of the disbanded directorates of the 4-x tank corps, 15 divisions were created, which surpassed the disbanded corps in the number of tanks, in combat power, and in the ability to conduct combat operations. The principle of using tank brigades and motorized divisions according to Pavlov assumed that they could be included in the composition of rifle corps, combined-arms armies and fronts, and also to be kept in reserve for the High Command. What is most interesting, these and many other proposals of D. Pavlov were later implemented not only in the Red Army, but also by our main adversary, the German Wehrmacht. The Germans during the attack on the Soviet Union according to the Barbarossa plan all their tank divisions, which had 150 tanks on average, brought the groups into the 4 (analogous to the EPR-Echelon of the development of the Pavlov breakthrough), according to this principle, they used tank forces and in the German tank army " Africa "under the command of the famous Field Marshal E. Rommel.
As can be seen from these examples, Stalin, appointing D.Pavlov to the post of commander of one of the main military districts of the country, apparently took into account that he was a fairly competent military commander who was strategic in thinking. As for the presence of combat experience and especially the experience of leading large unions, here, by all appearances, there was indeed the most vulnerable place in D.Pavlov’s personal readiness as commander. But whether it was decisive, in that further tragedy of Pavlov as a general of the army, commanding the Western special district, the question has not been solved until now. Few of the then Soviet generals had such an experience, very little, only Shaposhnikov’s name comes to mind, and the fact that he is a pure general staff officer and not a commander.
Further, from the biography of D.Pavlov, it is known that at the beginning of the 20-ies he served and participated in combat operations in Turkestan against Basmachany gangs in the posts of assistant regiment commander, fighter squadron commander and cavalry regiment commander, and from 1928, D.Pavlov the commander of the cavalry and mechanized regiments, the commander and commissar of the mechanized brigade, in this position in 1929, took part in the armed conflict against the Chinese on the CER. In 1936 — 1937 during the Spanish Civil War volunteered to fight on the side of the Republican government, was the commander of a tank brigade. From these facts it is clear that D.Pavlov was really a brave man, he went through many, as they say, “hot spots”, but at the same time he had the experience of commanding only a regiment brigade and nothing more. This conclusion is confirmed in particular by the memorandum of Colonel-General L. Sandalov, submitted by him to the Chief of the Military Scientific Directorate of the General Staff of the USSR Armed Forces from September 1 1956 of the year, which, in particular, states:
“Army General Pavlov, having no experience in commanding military units (excluding command for a short time by a tank brigade), after participating in the war in Spain, was appointed chief of the ABTU of the Red Army, and a year before the war - commander of the forces of ZOVO. Having neither experience in troop control, nor sufficient military education and a broad operational horizon, Army General Pavlov was confused in the difficult circumstances of the initial period of the war and let go of troop control. ”
And where at that time Stalin was to find commanders with a general staff education, experience in command of armies and fronts, so D.Pavlov was the military commander of his time and he was not the only one to blame for the fact that the enemy chose the direction of his main attack precisely in the direction of the location of the Western Special District commanded at the time it was he.
According to some modern researchers, allegedly the main fault of Pavlov was, first of all, that he did not comply with the Directive of NGOs and General Staff from 12-13 in June 1941 of the year, ordering the command of Zapov, ordering to increase combat readiness to begin the nomination of parts of the district to the defense lines according to the cover plans of NGOs and General Staffs worked out on the basis of the May Directive. However, the facts indicate that in mid-June 1941, D.Pavlov sent two codes to the People's Commissariat of Defense asking for the withdrawal of troops to field positions and even tried to get permission to partially mobilize parts of the district, he also asked to strengthen the district with communications and tanks.
Also, according to these researchers, Pavlov, after receiving the Directive from 12-13 in June, did not give the command to withdraw three divisions from the Brest region, which are located there for the construction of fortifications, in a timely manner. As a result, these three divisions - one tank and two rifle, intended to cover the Brest direction, were destroyed during the first days of the war, which was the main reason for the defeat of the troops of the entire Western Front and thus opened the enemy an important strategic direction to Minsk - Smolensk - Moscow .
In this regard, the following questions immediately arise. Where then was the General Staff of the Red Army, which was responsible for the strategic deployment of troops, in whose hands was all intelligence information? Why wasn’t the district commander given prompt instructions to withdraw troops from the Brest area? Where was the Commissariat of Defense? And these questions, where and why many, clear, specific answers to them do not.
There are also those researchers who claim, relying on a list of certain facts, even about the betrayal of some part of the generals and commanders of a different level on the eve of the war, and especially in its first days. For example, they cite the facts of the allegedly malicious withdrawal of military units from the border right in the first minutes of the war, with the result that the already small and poorly armed units of the border guards remained alone with a hundred times greater than their enemy. As a result, none of the 435 border posts on the western borders, unlike the troops of the Red Army, did not depart without orders, many border guards died in battle, fulfilling their military duty to the end.
It is also interesting that Pavlova was not judged by the famous 58 article of the Criminal Code. In the course of a closed court session of the Military Collegium of the USSR Supreme Court 22 July 1941, the articles of the Criminal Code were reclassified, for which the command of ZAPOVO was accused. They were arrested on charges of crimes under Art. 63-2 and 76 of the Criminal Code of the Byelorussian SSR (analogue of the famous article 58 in the Criminal Code of the RSFSR). However, a severe sentence was imposed on the basis of Art. 193-17 / b and 193-20 / b of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR. The wording of the conviction in the sentence was as follows: “for cowardice, inaction of the authorities, indiscriminate behavior, assumption of the collapse of command and control, surrender weapons to the enemy without a fight, the unauthorized abandonment of combat positions by units of the Red Army and the creation of the enemy's ability to break through the front of the Red Army. ”
“Creating the enemy an opportunity to break through the front of the Red Army” was charged only to Pavlov himself as the commander of the Western Front.
Stalin, instructing the retraining of the crime command of the Western Front to other articles of the Criminal Code, thus made it clear to the generals that he did not intend to arrange global force dismantling with him, especially like 1937, but, if necessary, he could easily do without the famous 58-th article.
31 July 1957 of the Year The Military Collegium of the USSR Supreme Court made the decision that the sentence of 22 July 1941 was canceled due to newly discovered circumstances and the case was terminated due to the absence of corpus delicti. Dmitry Pavlov was posthumously restored to military rank.
The question of who is primarily responsible for the defeat of June 1941 of the year, so still remains open.
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