The study of the last pre-war days in our historiography was given far less attention than the first days of the war itself. And the main share of publications is made up of the fantasies of Vladimir Bogdanovich Rezun, who broke the pseudonym Viktor Suvorov and his co-religionists. They support the version that was first declared on the first day of the Great Patriotic War by Adolf Aloisovich Hitler and developed in detail by Joseph Paul Friedrich Göbbels: they say that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was preparing an attack on the Third German Empire (TGI), and it was only defended. Of course, Rezun's stories are refuted both as a whole and in all details (for which I personally am especially grateful to Aleksei Valerievich Isaev, who revealed the main reception of lies used by Rezun - applying the tactics of the events to the strategic level and vice versa). But beyond this refutation, little has been done so far.In addition, rezunisty looking for all new loopholes. For example, Mikhail Ivanovich Meltyukhov assures: the USSR and TGI simultaneously and independently prepared for an attack on each other, and Hitler was just ahead of Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili. True, according to the data given in the works of Meltyukhov himself, it is quite obvious: the USSR had not the slightest chance of success coming before the middle of the 1942 of the year. But, according to Rezunists (including Meltyukhov), ascending to the speech of Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev at the first plenary session of the Central Committee, elected by the XX Party Congress, crrrrrrrrrrrrrn ™ Stalin considered himself omnipotent and did not bother with such trifles as the balance of forces and the level of training of the troops .
True, there is an opposite extreme, which also goes back to the tales of Grandfather Nikita: all the same krrrrrovy tyrrrrran ™ sincerely believed in the impossibility of a German attack, rejected all intelligence information, forbade taking any preparatory measures. Here, however, it must be admitted: our intelligence did report the upcoming 1941.06.22/1941.06.15/1941.06.01 German attack - as it reported about the attacks coming up to 1941.05.15/1941.05.06/1939.08.23, XNUMX/XNUMX/XNUMX, XNUMX/XNUMX/XNUMX ... the scouts were not to blame. The Germans themselves several times suffered the intended date of the first strike. Yes, in addition, they used the latest disinformation technology of those times - white noise: before each significant step, so many conflicting plausible rumors spread that in their abundance it was almost impossible to identify the only true option. The leaders of the Soviet intelligence did not even try to solve this overwhelming task. They simply provided all the extensive material for study directly to the head (from XNUMX) of the government in the hope that he could connect it with information accumulated through other channels. To some extent, he succeeded: the abusive resolution of Dzhugashvili was preserved on one of the intelligence reports, usually proclaimed as an example of his faith in Germany's faithful execution of the non-aggression treaty of XNUMX, but, in fact, absolutely accurate - a source in the German Ministry aviation he reported only about two (and not about three, as it was already clear by that time) groupings of the German strike, and even in completely implausible directions. But to fully separate the truth from the noise in these circumstances could not be Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, but perhaps Yeshua Iosifovich Davidov.
True, in the end, the Soviet leadership launched a trial balloon. The Soviet Telegraph Agency 1941.06.13 reported (this message came to the newspapers the next day, so 1941.06.14 dates it in many memoirs): The USSR fully complies with its obligations to Germany, it does not make any claims against the USSR, and the accumulation of German armed forces in the immediate vicinity of the Soviet borders caused, it must be assumed (hint at the expectation of explanation), circumstances not connected with a possible conflict. When there was no reaction from the German side, it became clear: Germany no longer intends to play a diplomatic game, and the attack will take place in the coming days.
Nevertheless, there was no obvious preparation for its reflection from the Soviet side. The reason for such passivity to this day has not been clarified in due measure.
Outside of Khrushchev and Rezunistiki, he explores the prewar period in detail, as far as I can tell, except perhaps Oleg Yuryevich Kozinkin. The cycle of his works "Who overslept the beginning of the war?", "Stalin. Who betrayed the leader on the eve of the war? ”,“ Myths and outright lies about the Russian stories, fabricated by our enemies "," Hitler's Lawyers. The truth about the war, or Why the historians are lying ”has already proved“ beyond all reasonable doubt ”: 1941.06.12 and 1941.06.18 The People’s Commissariat of Defense and the General Staff of the USSR sent directives on increasing combat readiness to five border military districts. The content of these directives was reconstructed by the efforts of many enthusiasts, but their texts have not yet been made public.
Moreover, official military historians have long denied their very existence. However, shortly after the war, one of the staff of the General Staff sent out many dozens of top Soviet military leaders a list of five questions, in fact, aimed at clarifying the order of passage of these directives on the steps of the military service ladder and the format of their execution in different places. Alas, the publication of answers was started only in 1990, and only the answers to the first two questions were published: the following answers, classified to this day, could quite accurately indicate those guilty of non-fulfillment of the center's instructions. However, even in these matters, directives are not explicitly mentioned. But there is no longer any doubt about their presence.
Why the existence of directives is denied is understandable. The picture, known from many sources and brought together by Kozinkin in one panoramic canvas, is very expressive. In the flank districts - Leningradsky (commanded by Markian Mikhailovich Popov) and Odessa (Nikandr Evlampievich Chibisov) - the instructions were fulfilled almost in full. In the interim — the Kiev Special (Mikhail Petrovich Kirponos) and the Baltic Special (Fedor Isidorovich Kuznetsov) — far from all the points were made, and even then, what they did come to, was not quite done. In the central - Belarusian or Western Special (Dmitry G. Pavlov) - district, they not only did not take the prescribed measures, but often did the exact opposite: from removing sighting devices from guns (under the pretext of calibration in laboratories, although they usually do it completely differently and right at the shooting ranges) before the withdrawal of troops to the exercises without full equipment and even dismantling weapons from 1941.06.21 fighters - right before the German strike.
Kozinkin makes a logical conclusion from this picture. Commander key - Special! - The districts changed the oath and the military duty to different extent, prepared the ways for going over to the enemy and prevented the preparation of repelling an enemy strike. Moreover, top Soviet military leaders — People’s Commissar of Defense Semyon Tymoshenko and Chief of the General Staff Georgy Zhukov — also behaved rather strangely before the war: they drastically delayed the transfer of the pre-war directive prepared by 1941.06.21 in the evening (with Zhukov’s submission to the army) Historiography is usually referred to as directive No. XXUMX, although, most likely, it was originally included in the pre-war numbering), and even formulated it so ambiguously that as for its execution , so for non-execution it was equally easy to get under the military tribunal. Obviously, they too can be suspected of conspiracy or at least a failure to perform their official duties.
True, the subsequent fate of all those mentioned does not give additional grounds for accusations. Is that Kuznetsov in October 1941 th, commanding 51 th Separate army, failed the defense of the isthmus connecting the Crimea with the mainland, and the Germans broke into the peninsula almost unhindered (which forced the evacuation of troops from Odessa for the defense of the Crimea: in the case of the fall of Sevastopol, my hometown turned out to be cut off from supplies and doomed to a quick capture by the enemy). But Kirponos acted quite competently, defended Ukraine hard enough to have the bulk of the industry evacuated, and 1941.09.20 died when trying to withdraw several armies from the encirclement. Pavlov, though executed a month after the start of the war, was not for treason, but for the loss of control of the troops entrusted to him.
The sentence is often explained by the reluctance to raise suspicions of mass betrayal of the generals. But after 1937, it was hardly possible to surprise Soviet citizens with the fact that another accomplice in the military conspiracy temporarily escaped justice and was finally captured (whether the conspiracy itself was a separate issue; judging by the entire body of information available today, there were probably several conspiracies of various sizes - from the desire to replace the policy of Kliment Efremovich Voroshilov as the People’s Commissar of Defense with someone more loyal to the generals to the intention, together with the Germans, to overthrow the politicians in both countries and create an alliance against the Entente). The loss of control is undeniable: from the very first days of the war, Pavlov rushed around the district, trying to personally command each division and almost never giving orders, covering immediately a noticeable share of the troops subordinate to him. In my opinion, this, alas, is natural: Pavlov didn’t command more than brigade formations, and got to the rank of army general through the leadership of the Main Armored Directorate of the Red Army (where, on the basis of experience gained during the civil war in Spain, he supported ballistic armor tanks - at the cost of abandoning the wheel drive, because wear-resistant caterpillars made of manganese steel have already appeared, and according to an analysis of the experience of fighting with the Japanese in August 1939 on the Khalkhin River, he proposed an effective structure for organizing armored forces close to that already formed during the Great Patriotic War) , so I just did not know what the real capabilities of the combined arms armies (not to mention the front as a whole) and how to use them.
There is no need to suspect Tymoshenko and Zhukov: after the start of the war, they behaved exactly as people with their military and political experience should have, and gave no more reasons for criticism than any other Soviet military leader of the same level.
However, the main reason for doubting the existence of a conspiracy, calculated by Kozinkin, was not even in the subsequent military prowess of famous commanders, but in the absence of any possible benefits for them in the event of a military defeat of the USSR. It is unlikely that at least one of the Soviet generals could hope for the inclusion of German military leaders in the closed and notoriously arrogant caste. There was no one to expect any money that could compensate for extensive material benefits (from official cars and extensive servants to country dachas, sometimes more reminiscent of a medium-sized manor: Nikita Sergeyevich Mikhalkov’s film “Burnt by the Sun”, depicting the transformation of the honored Commander of the Civil War into a new boyar , in this part of the plot is not too far from the truth). Neither were there any previous political distortions threatening severe punishments: all contacts with those executed by Mikhail Nikolayevich Tukhachevsky and Iona Emmanuilovich Yakir, alternative potential leaders of any possible military conspiracies in the USSR at that time, were studied by the relevant profile and were considered harmless by the USSR, which there was no need for Pavlov and Kirponos to hide from the terrible justice (by 1941, it had already proved to the country and the world more than once, which ended XenMX – 1937’s lawlessness) . At least, my imagination was not enough to come up with at least one way to get such high-ranking personalities to profit from treason.
So, several very significant, respected and - as far as possible - experienced military leaders deliberately do nothing (and even act) contrary to unambiguous instructions, and the mere fact of non-execution of these instructions is sufficient for the most severe punishment, and the possible (and largely realized) consequences of such behavior threaten the whole country, providing - among other things - their personal well-being and prosperity, and they are not expected to have alternative sources of well-being and prosperity. It is already difficult to qualify even as treason. It is rather insane.
But, as Polonius noted about Prince Hamlet, “if this is insane, then there is still a system in it”. It is unlikely that Kirponos, Kuznetsov and Pavlov could go mad not just at the same time, but also uniformly - to the extent that Kozinkin finds obvious repeats and parallels in the actions of Kirponos and Kuznetsov.
Moreover, in the Soviet armed forces there was a rather dense system of mutual control. However, just at the beginning of 1941, one of its key links - special departments - was transferred from the jurisdiction of the National Commissariat of Internal Affairs to the competence of the Commissariat of Defense itself, that is, all reports on suspicious activity were subject to consideration within the NGO itself. But the possibility of a party report remained, and simple reports to the NKVD about suspicions could not be intercepted. In such circumstances, it is still possible to weave a conspiracy among several long and well-known generals. But open action, at best, incomprehensible to others, inevitably attracted the investigation. And one could hardly hope for the sluggishness of the NKVDistov: the removal of weapons from fighters in the morning of June 21 should have been the subject of a criminal case by the evening of the same day.
All the above leads to the conclusion that incomprehensible to us events in the border districts should be part of the plan sanctioned at the very top - not only in NGOs, but also in the politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b), and in the Council of People's Commissars. It remains only to understand what was this intention.
By itself, this conclusion is pretty obvious. For example, the newest (2013) book by Boris Nikolaevich Shaptalov is entitled “Stalin's Military Conspiracy. Why the Leader planned the 1941 disaster of the year. ” I have not read this book yet. But, I suppose, the previous book by the same author, “The test of war — did Stalin withstand it?” (M., Yauza, EXMO, 2012), where two hypotheses of strange behavior of Dzhugashvili were put forward, can give some idea of it. On page 279 – 285 there is a paragraph “The theory of artificial difficulties”, where the theory itself consists of three points:
“1. The artificial difficulties created by the rulers are designed to raise the tone of the people and color the national history with bright colors.
2. By virtue of the first postulate, the ruler is forced at the beginning of his reign to deal with the difficulties of the previous one, after which he will face difficulties for the successor.
3. The greatness of the ruler is directly proportional to the difficulties and disputes of historians about the meaning of the deed. ”
And on page 285 – 300 - “Application for another historical sensation”, where on page 289 Dzhugashvili was declared a former secret agent of the security department, dreaming about the restoration of capitalism. It is clear that both hypotheses do not stand up to even the most condescending criticism. Seriously speaking about artificial difficulties can only be the one who, he has never had the slightest idea of the innumerable natural difficulties of national history, and all the accusations of Dzhugashvili in cooperation with the internal security services of the Russian Empire (they were repeatedly put forward both in the imperial and in the Soviet times) long, detailed and conclusively refuted.
However, Shaptalov draws parallels with Leib Davidovich Bronstein - Trotsky, Nikolai Bukharin, Mikhail Pavlovich Efremov - Tomsky and Alexei Ivanovich Rykov, charged with Dzhugashvili in all the same desire for the restoration of capitalism, and Mikhail Gorbachev publicly confessed to the crime already our days. But Bronstein and his colleagues lost in the public struggle to all the same Dzhugashvili (for example, in 1927, about the position of Brunstein was voted around 1 / 200 of the USSR communists, about as many others supported the options put forward in the general party discussion, and the rest 99 / 100 unambiguously supported Dzhugashvili's proposal; in subsequent disputes, the level of support for Bukharin, Efremov and Rykov’s speeches against Dzhugashvili turned out to be about the same, all this is not surprising, since Dzhugashvili’s opponents in all these disputes offered an extreme course, but he was looking for lot), so they simply had no other way to return to power, except for betraying their own ideals. Gorbachev, until the last minute of the government, defended precisely socialism, although with obviously unsuitable means, and only after leaving power declared that his goal was precisely defeat, according to the principle “it is better to pass for a nits than a sucker.” Dzhugashvili, having a much larger experience than Gorbachev, the experience of political struggle, could hardly hope for any personal well-being after the defeat of the USSR - especially in a market society, where the service already rendered is not worth a penny. Assumptions Shaptalova have to reject. For the sake of fairness, I will only note: as far as I can tell, he is mistaken in good faith - simply because his knowledge in military affairs and in leadership of really large systems (like the state) is even weaker than mine.
But there are other possible causes. For example, arising from the comments of my more famous colleague - a member of the trade union of journalists - Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov: "Politics is a concentrated expression of the economy."
True, this consideration most often justifies Khruschev’s disbelief of Dzhugashvili in the very possibility of German aggression. They say that Germany so badly needed the Soviet supply of raw materials that the leader did not expect the Germans to make a decision to provide these supplies by force. In fact, Soviet raw materials were far from being critical for TGI.
It received the bulk of the oil from Romania. A lot went also from Hungary. Yes, and on the actual German - first of all the Austrian - the territory was oil fields, although modest. Moreover, even the United States of America (MUH) supplied TGI — through Spanish dealers — almost more oil than the USSR. Moreover, deliveries from the MUH continued until the beginning of 1944 — until the preparations for the landing of troops of English-speaking countries in France began. The main source of liquid fuel in the SIG was its synthesis from coal. True, such gasoline is several times more laborious and worse in terms of the ratio of the energy produced to the spent energy, which means that it is more expensive than that obtained from oil - and the octane number is much lower, so it requires many times more anti-knock additives. But the German chemical industry — at that time the best in the world — coped with all these difficulties. Only a few months after Romania’s run over to the Soviet side, by the end of 1944, when the Anglo-Saxons, providing their own fighting, temporarily abandoned their usual practice of aerial bombardment of residential areas only, and targeted the main German gasoline synthesis plants bombed — TGI began to feel a shortage liquid fuels.
A similar picture for other types of Soviet raw materials. Cotton lines - scraps of fibers when separated from seeds - are a convenient source of cellulose for nitration to pyroxylin, but in Germany there are many other sources of the same cellulose, so it lacked smokeless powder even after complete cessation of access to Central Asian cotton. In order for our iron ore, the Germans managed not to specify the minimum acceptable iron concentration, so they received waste from the work of our ore-dressing factories from the USSR, and ore with a high proportion of iron was transported from Sweden throughout the war. And, say, the Germans began to receive Soviet manganese in appreciable quantities only after the seizure of the Nikopol deposit (the very same Shaptalov was outraged by the Soviet frontal attacks of the Nikopol bridgehead, while the German generals in the memoirs were amazed at the exorbitant costs of the German forces to hold it; in fact, every day German possession of Nikopol allowed to take in TGI hundreds of tons of metal required for the wear resistance of tank tracks). I’m not even talking about such types of raw materials as chicken feathers and chaff: The Germans, of course, have found use for even this, but it is rather difficult to consider such supplies vital for combat operations.
Obviously, the economic considerations that kept the USSR from timely preparation for the immediate commencement of hostilities concerned the state and capabilities of the USSR itself, but not the TGI.
Back in 2005, the book of Yakov Grigorievich Verkhovsky and Valentina Tyrmos “Stalin. Secret "scenario" of the beginning of the war. In their opinion, the head of government (and the actual head of state) deliberately set the army under a crushing German blow in order to win over the public opinion of the West and thus provide the USSR with economic support in the war. I then mentioned this work in my snide note "Axioms of conspiracy." In fact, the economic potential of the USSR itself seemed to me then sufficient to cope with the enemy and without assistance. After all, all Western deliveries - both under Lend-Lease and for real money - amounted to the total 1 / 25 of Soviet own costs of the war. True, on some points (gunpowder, high-octane gasoline) supplies reached half of their own production. But before the war it was difficult to expect this: no one in the USSR thought that Germany would occupy all of White and Little Russia, and even a fair piece of Great. In addition, in the absence of supplies, some productions would have to be developed and redeployed, but on the whole, the task was completely possible then - planned, and therefore able to concentrate efforts on key sectors - the Soviet economy: in general, production had to be increased only by 1 / 25 .
Moreover, even the Anglo-Saxon military assistance, insistently demanded by the Soviet leadership from the very moment of the German attack on us, turned out to be completely unnecessary. Judging by the fighting since the Anglo-Saxon landing on the European continent (even in Italy in 1943, even in France in 1944), without this landing, the Soviet troops could cope with the Germans and their numerous allies only a few months later and additionally it is unlikely to lose more than half a million people. And this is incomparably fewer people (and means) than was required for the subsequent opposition to the same Anglo-Saxons: from showing the impracticability of the Unthinkable operation that was planned by the end of the war by Winston Leonard Randolphovich Spencer-Churchill, to the prosecution of the Unthinkable, that is, the joint attack on the USSR by the Anglo-Saxons and the captured Germans, before the prosecution of the Unthinkable, that is, the joint attack on the USSR by the Anglo-Saxons and the captured Germans, before the prosecution of the Unthinkable, that is, the joint attack on the USSR by the Anglo-Saxons and the captured Germans, before the prosecution of the Unthinkable, that is, the joint attack on the USSR by the Anglo-Saxons and the captured Germans, before the prosecution of the Unthinkable, that is, the joint attack on the USSR by the Anglo-Saxons and the captured Germans, to lead the prosecution to the Unthinkable, i.e. By the same Churchill and started by Harry S. (he did not decipher this initial, asserting that in this way he pays tribute to two relatives at once) John-Andersovich Truman of the Cold War. The geopolitical consequences of the treatment of the entire European continent in the field of cooperation with the USSR are even more innumerable.
Even subsequent publications about the true possibilities of the German bloc did not change my opinion. Almost all European industry worked in Germany. In the same ranks with the Germans (including the inhabitants of Austria, now once again separated from the rest of Germany, and Alsace, now once again entering France), not only the troops of Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Finland, Croatia that declared the USSR fought, but and volunteers from Spain (one division: Generalissimo Francisco Paulino Ermenehildo Teodulo Nicolasovich Franco Bahamonde fused everyone who was not satisfied with the civil war and intended to continue the battle), France (there were more than participants widely advertised augmented French Resistance), Belgium, the Netherlands, Scandinavian countries (including neutral Sweden) ... Nevertheless, the degree of industrial restructuring for military needs and quite modest even by our (not to mention German) standards began much less than in the USSR war, the fighting capacity of the European rabble left the USSR excellent chances of victory. If we take into account the natural pre-war time, even taking into account the complex experience of the Finnish campaign, the political leadership’s confidence in the capabilities of the armed forces, there is no reason at all to place these forces under the first, obviously powerful, enemy strike.
Alas, it was only with an unpardonable delay for the analyst that I began to understand: it is not only about providing additional opportunities for myself, but also to prevent additional opportunities for the enemy. And Germany had plenty of opportunities.
Only 6 weeks before the German aggression - 1941.05.10 - Hitler's personal secretary and his official deputy for the National Socialist German Workers' Party Rudolf Walter Richard Johann-Fritsevich (Fritz - short form from Friedrich, but in Germany has long existed as an independent name) Hess at the two-engine The Messerschmitt-110 fighter flew into the British Empire (BI). Officially, he was declared insane for it, but only a few days after the flight, when they came to the conclusion in Germany that even the politicians of the second British echelon did not contact him. Soviet agents in Britain - above all the legendary Cambridge five aristocrats with left-wing convictions - undoubtedly, many significant details were reported in the USSR, but even they could not know exactly who of the British leadership hoped to meet the second person in the Nazi hierarchy, and most importantly - was not Are there any contacts through third parties that do not attract general attention?
But the whole world knew: not only Hitler himself was a fanatical angloman who used the Houston's Stuart's racial theory of William Charlesow Chamburin in his propaganda and devoted hundreds of pages of My Struggle to his admiration for the island empire, but among the British aristocrats there are a myriad of sincere supporters. . True, Arthur Neville Josephovich Cemberlen, when he was the prime minister of Britain, who had given Czechoslovakia to Hitler, was already dead. But the current Prime Minister Winston, Leonard Randolphovich Spencer-Churchill, was still in the middle of the 1930's, admiring the creator of fascism and the leader of Italy, Benito Amilcare Andrea Alessandrovich Mussolini. Osvald Ernald Osvaldovich Mosley, the founder and permanent leader of the British Fascist Union (his son Max Rufus in 1993 – 2009) was in charge of the International Motorsports Federation, was interned with the start of the war - but the baronet title made him even above Churchill even above Churchill, whose father was only the third son of Duke Malboro. And Nancy Witcher Chizuelllovna Langhorn — an American, like Churchill's mother, and the first woman elected to the British parliament — and her second husband, media mogul Waldorf William-Waldorfovich Astor, the second Viscount Astor, from the beginning of 1930, gathered in their own property. all of the British nobility, including the same Churchill (back in 1912, they exchanged legendary remarks: "If I were your wife, Winston, you would have poisoned you in coffee" - "If I were your husband, Nancy, then would drink it "), and they all stood up for everything that could prevent social lizma.
It was easy to assume: the slightest reason to declare the USSR an aggressor - and the brilliant British aristocracy will bring to a logical conclusion the plan prepared at the beginning of 1940, but frustrated by Finland’s too fast capitulation - the bombing of the Baku oil fields. It is unlikely to bring the USSR out of the war: too many pots beat two empires in the previous year, so that Britain would want to lose the counterweight to Germany. But the USSR in this case turned out to be critically dependent on the supply of Middle Eastern - British at that time - oil, and therefore would have been forced to do everything dictated from London.
And this is also the most favorable option: history knows many examples of alliance between countries that fiercely fought yesterday. I will not give them all, but I will remind you only of the domestic case. After the almost complete defeat of Prussia in the Seven Years' War, where the Russian Empire played a decisive role, Elizabeth I Petrovna Romanova died suddenly. Her son of her sister Anne was replaced by a fanatical admirer of the King of Prussia Friedrich II Friedrich Vilhelmovich Hohentsollern Peter III Fedorovich Romanov - Karl Peter Ulrich Karl-Friedrichovich zu Holstein-Gottorp von Untervalden. He returned everything won and even ordered the troops to go under the Prussian command. In a couple of months, the guards overthrew him in favor of his wife Catherine II Alexeevna - Sophia Augusta Frederika Christian Augustus Ascania von Anhalt-Zerbst. But even she could not return at least East Prussia, whose inhabitants had already sworn allegiance to Russia. Who knew: all of a sudden, Churchill's bulldog stubbornness was so sick of someone that the mistress of the seas would prefer to see his magnificent funeral and send her battleships to the Baltic?
On the other side of the Atlantic, things were, from the Soviet point of view, worse. The United States of America has not yet participated in the hostilities, but only helped the British Empire on “lend-lease” terms: the property supplied by the MUH was either to be spent during the hostilities, or, upon termination, to be returned to the MUH or paid. Moreover, conditions so favorable for the consumer arose only after the exhaustion of the British possibilities of ordinary payment for supplies: for example, for fifty squadron destroyers built by the MUH back in World War I, the BI provided the MUH naval bases in the British Virgin Islands for rent on 99 years, which international practice is usually considered a euphemism for eternity (although the same Britain in 1997-m was forced to return Hong Kong to China, taken for the same 99 years - but this is not a great empire before World War II). This is understandable: in the interwar period, MUH and BI were strategic competitors, so the MUH made considerable efforts to limit (and further, dismantle) BI.
The then competition of the two main British countries was caused by objective reasons: the vast markets of the British colonies were almost closed to non-British goods, and the MUH industry was in dire need of new consumers for its further expansion and development.
In the first half of 1930, the MUH industry dragged Soviet industrialization out of the crisis: much of the Soviet factories of that time were bought from the MUH almost turnkey, or at least designed with the participation of American specialists and equipped with a significant share of the American equipment. But at the end of the first five-year plan (1927 – 1932), dedicated to the creation of enterprises for the production of means of production, the USSR used more and more of its own products for further industrialization, and therefore it needed less and less to import. He paid off a significant part of the American loans in the second five-year period (1933 – 1937), so he almost got rid of the financial system of the MUH. Overseas, high-tech samples were now bought (primarily, aircraft and aircraft engines; I already wrote about one of the conflicts related to these purchases in the article “A crime against improvement. Big Terror is a way of preserving dual-channel control”), and then for own Soviet production, and royalties much less income from the sale of finished products in bulk.
However, in 1940, even such cooperation has ceased. After the start of the Soviet-Finnish war (alas, objectively necessary for the protection of the Leningrad industrial region and started only after the refusal of the then Finnish leadership to peacefully exchange territories in the ratio 2: 1 in favor of Finland, although the Winter War is still trying to proclaim proof of Soviet aggression) Only the British-French Entente began to prepare a blow to the USSR, but the MUH was outraged sharply. President Franklin Delano Jamesovich Roosevelt (generally pro-Soviet, and in addition he used many methods of state intervention in the economy, branded while socialism) to bring the country out of the crisis, proclaimed a moral embargo: there were no official prohibitions, so as not to introduce the state into possible costs of compensation force majeure losses of entrepreneurs, but contracts with the USSR froze.
In the middle of 1941, it was not at all clear whether the MUH would go to war explicitly and on whose side. According to the experience of the First World War one should have expected that they would wait either for the obvious superiority of one of the parties, or for complete mutual exhaustion. And in that war, the pro-German lobby turned out to be almost as strong as the pro-British one. And in 1930, German agitation in the MUH, which was imposed on traditional Anglo-Saxon racism, turned out to be so strong that in 1938, the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) had to be adopted - in its image and likeness The Russian law 2012 on non-profit organizations.
In such conditions, it is natural to expect: MUH will oppose the one whom they themselves proclaim as the aggressor. Even if they did not send their troops to the Old World (the isolation tradition was so strong in the MUH that many explain the 1941.12.07 catastrophe in Pearl Harbor when the Japanese caught the MHA fleet by surprise, despite all the preliminary information about the preparation of some drastic actions available to the Americans, Roosevelt’s desire to overcome this isolationism and force the country to begin hostilities around the world), then at least increase the supply of its goods to Germany, and even threaten BI to terminate the lend-lease in case of refusal of an honorable pass ria. And then the USSR will not just be left without outside supply, but will face the combined economic power of the rest of the world.
People of my generation well remember what efforts this confrontation demanded even in the 1960 – 1970-s successful for us and crisis for the market world. But before the Second World War, there were a dozen other socialist countries that took on a considerable share of the military burden. And the USSR itself became a great power only during this war. Suffice it to say: until the end of 1920, Poland was considered a serious opponent for us, and in 1930 the Polish-Romanian alliance was a noticeable threat to the USSR. To admit the declaration of the USSR as an aggressor in 1941 was impossible under any circumstances.
I have to - alas, with a delay of 8 years - apologize to Verkhovsky and Tyrmos. They felt more precisely the 1941 atmosphere of the year. Although they formulated their feelings somewhat one-sidedly, they considered the needs of the USSR only, but not its opponents.
Having come to this conclusion, it is already easy to understand why the command of the border districts disrupted the bringing of troops into combat readiness. It simply feared that movements in the border zone would be announced as preparations for Soviet aggression. Therefore, only what could be hidden from any observers was done.
Affected, of course, are differences in combat proficiency. For example, in the Odessa Military District on the night of June 22 almost all the aircraft flew to alternate aerodromes, and in the Western Special Flight were postponed until morning, fearing numerous accidents, because there only a small proportion of pilots could drive cars in the dark - and the equipment on the main aerodromes turned out to be under attack.
But these differences themselves are largely objectively conditioned. In the then USSR, the main industrial districts were historically formed around St. Petersburg, Moscow and the Donetsk-Dnieper interfluve. New areas — on the Volga and the Urals (where they created much more in the first two five-year plans than in all the pre-Soviet times), in Siberia, in Central Asia — they only developed and gained experience. Moreover, the Moscow-Volga industrial region is so far from the border that its capture is a long and difficult affair. Therefore, the main attacks of the enemy were expected on the flanks, and a breakthrough in the center was considered as though inevitable (which I explored in the article “Bialystok and Lviv”), but auxiliary. Soviet border forces were stationed - and more importantly, trained - in line with such expectations.
Elena Anatolyevna Prudnikova in the book “Lenin – Stalin: the technology of the impossible” proves: in itself, the successful evacuation of the bulk of industry from Ukraine already meant the failure of German plans. It is unlikely that the Germans seriously expected to exterminate all the Soviet armed forces in the border battle: this was not possible even in much smaller France, so that only its demoralization prevented further resistance. But if Germany seized such a significant share of our industry, the army would have been without an influx of weapons and ammunition. Unarmed to beat is easy.
Prudnikova notes: in the third five-year plan (1938 – 1942) it was planned to build two and a half thousand new enterprises. The specialists laughed: in the USSR there was not only their own resources for equipping all these enterprises with equipment, but even funds for purchasing the necessary amount of equipment abroad. But the one who laughs last is laughing well: in 1941, industrial sites already prepared — with railway lines, plumbing, electrical cables, foundations, concrete floors — took almost all the factories from the Soviet territories occupied or threatened with occupation. Moreover, according to Prudnikova, the schedules of such exportation themselves were developed as part of mobilization plans - as an integral part of the country's transfer to war footing.
Prudnikova also points out: in the initial period of the war, warlords punished retreats even for the sake of troops - the enemy was delayed to evacuate the factories, albeit at the cost of incredible losses. It is cruel - but, alas, inevitable: without this, the war would have been lost.
So, it was necessary to prevent any aggressive gestures, to protect the flanks even with a failure in the center (there was not enough forces to evenly protect the entire border) - and at the same time, the awareness of the reality of the threat with the blow in the center matured: the Germans still hoped cut off the bulk of our troops from the rear and then seize industrial areas that have already been deprived of serious protection. Most likely, the army — first of all, just in the Western Special District, where the accumulation of German forces was particularly obvious, and therefore the Soviet troops had tensed in advance — would respond to the very first German strike in full force. And a day or two at the border could go battles with varying success. Moreover, the higher command was expecting even more: in any army in the world, the idea of their own abilities was pretty high. Yes, and in genuine circumstances far from favorable for the USSR, 1941.06.22 Soviet troops repulsed Przemysl captured by the Germans on the South-Western Front (since the outbreak of the fighting began the Kiev Special District), landed troops on the Romanian Prut (Southern Front, created from the Odessa district) . With a different level of combat readiness, they could move much wider and deeper. And then all over the world they would have screamed about Soviet aggression against peaceful Germany and Romania - how 2008.08.08 had voiced the fierce attack of the Russian Federation on the peaceful Georgia that was not guilty of anything.
Perhaps that is why Pavlov had to give clearly suicidal orders listed in detail in Kozinkin’s books. Knowing his warriors, he expected from them extremely decisive actions at the very first signs of a German strike - and took from them the very possibility of such actions so that even the most fanatical German adherents did not have the opportunity to declare her actions merely protection from the Soviet threat.
Another thing is that Pavlov, Kuznetsov, Kirponos clearly overestimated the possibility of regrouping the troops already under attack. For example, the Brest Fortress — the largest barracks in the region — turned out to be a trap: the shelling of the gate prevented the divisions there from entering the open field, and its own fortifications, last reconstructed long before the First World War, did not allow an effective fire to be fired at the enemy. Installing cannons and machine guns back to the fighters took many hours. The mechanized corps, which had already been deeply penetrated by the enemy in advance to strike the flank, did not have the necessary motor life for such a maneuver: old types of tanks were worn out for a long time, and the newest В-34 diesel engine standing on T ‑ 2 and HF didn’t break 100 hours, as it should be on passport data, and for 35 in winter and 25 in summer (the filter of the new design appeared only by the end of 1943). There was almost nothing to tow to the battlefields of guns brought to landfills: the bulk of the transport laid by the troops was mobilized, and in peacetime was in the national economy (I wrote about the ratio of transport capabilities of the Soviet and German armed forces in the article “Wheels blitzkrieg ", which later became an annex to the aforementioned" Belostok and Lviv "). In a word, the trap set by the Germans turned out to be so deep that the Soviet armed forces themselves got into it. But it could hardly have been foreseen in full, focusing only on technical characteristics and experience of maneuvers. Although it can be qualified as a loss of control, for which Pavlov was condemned.
On the flanks, the position was more favorable for us than in the center. There, they initially waited for the German strike of utmost power, and therefore did not even plan to launch an immediate counteroffensive. And there was no reason to hold back preparations for military operations. True, the Romanian troops showed traditional incapacity, so it was simply impossible to resist the landing of troops on their shore. But it didn’t become a reason for hostile propaganda: what the armed forces of Romania represent, the whole world knew from the era of the Balkan wars that preceded the First World War, and therefore it was unthinkable to declare the landing party a sign of Soviet aggression.
By the way, when during the First World War Romania decided which side to act on, then Alekseevich Mikhail Alekseevich Belyaev, then Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Empire (RI), said: “Romania’s entry into the war will in any case require us 20 divisions: if it comes against us - to break it; if you speak for us, to protect her. ” He turned out to be right: he had to leave 1916.08.10 and become a representative of the Republic of Ingushetia under the Romanian High Command; 1916.08.28 Romania entered the war and was immediately defeated by the Austro-Hungarian army, so that Russia really had to keep 20 divisions on the Romanian front.
Alas, neither the troops nor the heroic defense of Odessa from the Romanians with a small admixture of Germans (from 1941.08.05 to 1941.10.16 - almost twice as long as the whole of France held out against Germany), nor the other virtues of the Southern Front did not change the strategic position. The troops of the other four fronts incurred incomparably more losses and retreated incomparably farther than could be expected when the command of the respective military districts, to the best of their own understanding, tried to solve two opposite tasks: prepare for the inevitable impending enemy attack and at the same time prevent it from interpreting this preparation as an aggressive move.
True, the main strategic plans of the enemy still managed to disrupt. The bulk of the equipment of the old industrial regions and enterprise personnel were evacuated, so that the army and aviation already six months after the outbreak of the war - just at the time of the exhaustion of pre-war stocks - began to receive weapons and ammunition in an acceptable amountthe fleet the reserves were enough for a couple of years, because at sea the fighting was much less intense than on land). The army itself, although it suffered enormous losses, was preserved as a single organism - controlled and able to effectively use incoming replenishment and supply. And at the same time, the enemy failed to interpret these our successes as signs of Soviet aggression: the whole world, including the undoubted fans of Germany, recognized it as the aggressor. Therefore, only those who were in alliance with Germany opposed the USSR (even then, Japan abstained, because its agreement with Germany obliged each country to support another only if it turned out to be an object of aggression), and BI and SGA supported the USSR its powerful economy.
Nevertheless, the position of the USSR as a whole was dangerously close to a catastrophe in the first months of the war. The strategy of containing preparations for repelling a first strike gave rise to such dangerous consequences that the first successful ones - after a series of ineffective, and sometimes failures - the Soviet counteroffensive under Moscow and Rostov seemed a miracle (and today many people, except perhaps the heroism of General Frost, the side of the front line reigned summer and only the Germans were cold).
Military art includes several levels. If we ignore the subtleties that are important primarily to the professionals themselves, they can be summarized briefly. Tactics - actions in the course of an already established battle. Operational art (until recently it was divided between neighboring levels, and only in the writings of Soviet military theorists, it turned out to be clearly distinguished and described) - command and control of troops during a series of battles with movements resulting from the consequences of each battle. Strategy - the preparation and conduct of a sequence of operations, united by design. Logistics - supply and training of troops. The higher the level, the harder and longer the game on it, the more serious the risk - but the bigger the possible gain.
Alas, not always success at the lowest level guarantees a higher level of profit. Moreover, often for the benefit of higher levels, lower levels have to be sacrificed. For example, the chief (1891 – 1905) of the German General Staff Alfred Magnusovich von Schlieffen built the plan of the First World War in such a way that the German troops had to avoid direct clashes with the French and English or lose all the clashes where they could not avoid, but this maneuver ended with an environment Paris from the west and his capture, because all the enemy forces were fond of their own victories to the north and east. His successor, Helmut Johann Ludwig Adolfovich von Moltke, unfortunately, did not inherit the louder of the strategic talent of his uncle Helmut Karl Bernhard, Friedrich-Philippe-Viktorovich von Moltke, associate of the legendary politician Otto Eduard Leopold Karl-Wilhelm-Ferdinand the Chief of the Chief of the Netherlands, and the background of the legendary politician Otto Eduard Leopold He strengthened the Lorraine grouping of German troops and threw the French westward, that is, to defend their capital. Paris survived, the war was protracted, and eventually Germany lost.
The USSR played at the highest level - sacrificed a strategy for the sake of logistics. The risk was enormous. Losses at the strategic level are monstrous. This is also due to the fact that a significant part of the Soviet commanders did not have acceptable experience, not only strategic, but even operational (and at the lower levels - tactical) actions. But ultimately the victim was justified.