Many years have passed since the scarlet banner of Victory was raised in Berlin over the Reichstag. Many young people now have a very remote idea of what the war was for us and for the world. Especially about what plans of domination over nations were hatched by the leaders of the Third Reich and to whom, first of all, humanity is obliged to get rid of Nazi enslavement.
In our modern school textbooks on stories these plots, alas, are not set aside a worthy place.
WORLD GERMAN EMPIRE
19 June 1941 of the year. Three days left before the German attack on the Soviet Union. The chief of staff of the supreme commander, General Jodl, directs the commander-in-chief of the ground forces, the air force and naval forces Brauchitsch, Goering and Roder to draft Directive No. 32 “Preparing for the period after the implementation of the Barbarossa plan, that is, after the defeat of the Soviet Union. The drafting of this directive was finalized at the Fuhrer's rate and signed by 11 Yodel on June 1941.
After being reviewed by the commanders of the armed forces, it is finally approved 30 June 1941 of the year.
How did Hitler and his generals imagine the subsequent development of Nazi expansion after the victory over the Soviet Union? Directive No. 32 began: “A. After the defeat of the Russian armed forces, Germany and Italy will dominate militarily on the entire European continent ... There will no longer be any threat from land to European territory. To defend it and conduct future offensive operations, we will need significantly less ground forces than we needed to date. Major efforts in military production can be focused on providing naval and air forces. ” Thus, the center of gravity of the war was transferred to the struggle against Britain and the United States. To do this, as indicated in the diary of the High Command from 4 June 1941, it was provided for "the creation of a European-West African bastion against the Anglo-American coalition."
From the end of August 1941, it was planned to begin the withdrawal of troops from the Soviet territory, intended to perform the next aggressive tasks - so great was the Nazi command confidence in a quick victory in the East. The ground forces were supposed to reduce from 209 to 175 divisions, but to increase the power of the Air Force and Navy. The top strategic tasks of the Wehrmacht were to be operations to seize North Africa, Gibraltar, the countries of the Near and Middle East, Malta, Cyprus and the Suez Canal. From November 1941 of the year to September 1942 of the year it was planned to take possession of the whole Caucasus and Transcaucasia and from there begin the advance to Baghdad and to the most important sources of Middle Eastern oil. 3 July 1941, Chief of the General Staff of the Ground Forces Halder recorded the following entry in his diary: “Preparing an offensive in the direction of the Nile-Euphrates interfluve, both from Cyrenaica and through Anatolia and, possibly, from the Caucasus to Iran ... Operation through Anatolia against Syria, in conjunction with an auxiliary operation from the Caucasus, it will be launched after the deployment of the necessary forces in Bulgaria, which should also be used to put political pressure on Turkey in order to get the troops to pass. ” Directive number 32 prescribed in case of refusal of Turkey to miss the German troops, to break its resistance by force weapons. How far the conquering plans of German fascism went, shows the development on February 14 of 17 of 1942 of an operation against the pearl of the British colonial empire, India, by 17 of German divisions.
All these operations were aimed at creating favorable strategic positions for the war against England and the United States. First of all, it was planned first to deal with England. “... After completing the campaign to the East,” said directive No. 32, “the siege of England” should be resumed in full scale by the naval and air forces ... Preparing the landing in England should serve a dual purpose: to bind the British forces in the metropolis, and also to cause and complete the emerging collapse of the UK. "
After that, the final stage of the establishment of world domination of Nazi Germany was to follow - the war against the USA. It is interesting to note that Hitler, in his “Second Book,” written in 1928 and published in the Federal Republic of Germany only in 1961, wrote about the inevitability of the struggle between the US and Europe, which the Germans would have to lead. He raved about the "inclusion of the United States in the German world empire."
25 July 1941, a little more than a month after the start of Operation Barbarossa, Hitler, in a meeting with Navy Commander Roeder, said that after the end of the campaign to the East, he "intends to take vigorous action against the United States." Already in the autumn of 1941, it was planned to begin the bombing of American cities in the eastern part of the United States. For this purpose, the occupation of the Azores and strongholds on the west coast of Africa, in Iceland and even in Brazil was planned.
The end goals of the Nazi leadership in World War II can be judged from the following statement by Himmler, referring to October 1943: “By the end of this war, when Russia eventually exhausts or is eliminated, and Britain and America cannot make war, the task will arise for us the creation of a world empire ... In this war, we will achieve that everything that has been attached to the Great German Empire in the past years, with 1938, remains in our possession. The war is being waged in order to establish the German world empire. This is the meaning of war, no matter how long it lasts - five, or maybe six or even seven years. ”
And what did the Nazis intend to do with the Russian and other peoples of the Soviet Union after their victory? It was planned to leave 56 divisions on the territory of the "four state formations" - the Baltic states, Russia, Ukraine and the Caucasus. The headquarters of the "commander-in-chief of the troops in the East" was to be located in Moscow. Soviet territory was subject to occupation up to the Urals. The industry of the Urals was to be destroyed as a result of a "large motorized expedition" by forces of eight tank and four motorized divisions. The space between the Volga and the Urals was dotted with concentration camps.
"RUSSIAN SHOULD DIE"
The scale and content of the actions planned by the Nazi leadership to “explore the eastern space” is evidenced by the “Ost Master Plan” - perhaps the most savage plan of the 20th century that pursued the total genocide of the Russian people. Its development began in the department of Himmler together with the Eastern Ministry of Rosenberg in 1940, even before the drawing up of Directive No. 32, and was continued after the attack on the Soviet Union. The main goal of the plan was formulated as follows: “This is not only about the defeat of the state with the center in Moscow. Achieving this historical goal would never mean a complete solution to a problem. The point is most likely to defeat the Russians as a people, to divide them. Only if this problem is considered by us from a biological, especially from a racial-biological point of view, and if in accordance with this German policy is pursued in the eastern regions, will it be possible to eliminate the danger posed to us by the Russian people ... For us Germans, it is important to weaken the Russian people to such an extent that it is no longer able to prevent us from establishing German domination in Europe. ”
Undermining the "power of the Russian people" was thought to carry out the holding of a whole range of activities. This included the maximum reduction of the Russian population by imposing poverty, reducing birth rates, eliminating medical care and supplying medicines, and destroying intellectuals by eliminating education, and resettling over the Urals, to the Caucasus, to Africa and even to South America more than 50 million Russians from the European part of Russia, but for now the 14 million remaining here will be turned into a manual labor force in the service of the colonialists.
But the main thing was to permanently undermine the centralized statehood of the Russian people, on which the power of Russia rested. The “Ost Master Plan” said this: “The whole territory of Russia should be divided into a number of states with its own governments ... It is necessary to provide for the division of the territory inhabited by Russians into different political areas with their own governing bodies in order to ensure separate national development in each of them ... so that they would under no circumstances rely on Moscow ... There is no doubt that such administrative division of Russian territory and the planned separation of individual regions will be one to them from the means of combating the strengthening of the Russian people ... It is necessary to destroy the carriers of the state political idea. "
Particular attention was paid to the destruction of the intellectual gene pool of the Russian nation. Hitler said: in order to undermine the power of the people, it is enough to destroy its “cultural walkers”, that is, carriers of spirituality, knowledge and creativity in the field of politics and economics, science and technology, culture and art, historical memory. To achieve this, it was envisaged, in particular, to say: “In no case should the local population be given a higher education. If we make this mistake, we ourselves will create resistance in the future against us. Therefore, according to the Fuhrer, it is quite enough to train the local population, including the so-called Ukrainians, only in reading and writing. ”
Hitler described the long-term goal of the Nazi "Eastern Policy" as resettlement in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, about 100 million of the German race. For this purpose, it was planned to resettle a large part of the population of these countries to Siberia, and in the next 10 years 20 million Germans would settle the “vacated” lands. The remaining population was subject to germanization. All of these countries were supposed to disappear from the map of Europe. The plans of the Hitlerite leadership provided for a "final solution of the Jewish question," that is, the complete destruction of the Jews.
22 June 1941, the command of the Wehrmacht launched the operation "Barbarossa" - the crushing of the Soviet Union. The further development of the global expansion of fascist Germany and the implementation of plans conceived by the Nazis depended on its success. But for Hitler and his generals, this unfortunate date was the starting point for the death of the Nazi Third Empire. The task of this article does not include a detailed analysis of events on the Soviet-German front. I will dwell only on the main, turning stages of the armed struggle, in which the fate of the peoples was decided.
The initial period of the war was very unfavorable for the Soviet Union. The country alone had to resist the colossal onslaught of the Nazi war machine, which had gained a great experience of fighting in Europe the day before. During the initial period of the war, the Hitler command was able to inflict serious damage on the first strategic echelon of the Soviet defense. Until February, 1942, about 3,5 million Soviet soldiers and officers fell into German captivity. From June to September, the Wehrmacht managed to advance a close distance to Moscow and Leningrad, to capture most of Ukraine. But this ended the rapid military successes of the Nazi troops. They came across the ever-increasing resistance of the Red Army, recovering from the first defeats. Already on August 11, the Chief of the General Staff of the Ground Forces, Colonel-General Halder, wrote in his diary: “The general situation shows more and more clearly that the Colossus of Russia ... was underestimated by us. This statement can be extended to all economic and organizational aspects, to the means of communication and ... especially to the purely military capabilities of the Russians. ”
STRAINED TYPHOON
Since September, 1941, the seizure of Moscow during the operation, called the Typhoon, has become the central task of the strategy of the Hitlerite leadership. In fact, the fate of the whole war had to be decided in the Moscow sector, namely, whether the Wehrmacht could complete the blitzkrieg, defeat the main forces of the Red Army, capture the Soviet capital and avoid a protracted war of attrition, which was similar to Hitler’s death command. In the second half of September, the Army Group Center under the command of Field Marshal Kluge, which conducted Operation Typhoon, was significantly enhanced by troops deployed from other sectors of the Soviet-German front. It contained 42% manpower, 75% tanks, 45% guns and mortars, over 30% of aircraft of the total forces in the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front. Such a concentration of military power in a limited space did not know military history. German troops outnumbered Soviet in numbers and armament 1,5 – 2,5 times.
September 30 began one of the greatest battles of the Second World War. First, luck accompanied the German command. He managed to break through the Soviet front in three places and encircle the troops of four Soviet armies by October 7 in the Vyazma region. But their heroic resistance for more than a week constrained the strength of the 28 German divisions. This allowed the Soviet command to organize defense in the Mozhaisk area. No matter how hard the leadership of the Wehrmacht tried to seize Moscow, it failed to achieve this. By the end of October, it was forced to stop the offensive and make a two-week pause. The forces of the group of German troops in the Moscow area were on the wane. And it was not possible to transfer additional troops from other sectors of the front here. Divisions of Army Group "South" were shackled by heavy fighting near Kharkov, in the Crimea and near Rostov, and the offensive of the group of armies "North" failed in the Tikhvin area. Meanwhile, the Soviet command formed in the rear of the Soviet troops defending Moscow 10 new armies.
15 – 16 on November German troops renewed the offensive by forces of more than 50 divisions. They managed to advance north of Moscow to Yakhroma, and to the south - to Kashira. But their further advancement came up against an insurmountable defense and was suspended. At the height of the fighting, Quartermaster-General Wagner reported to Halder: "Our troops are on the eve of a complete depletion of material and human forces." And the Soviet troops, replenished with fresh strategic reserves, launched the December 5 counterattack. It ended in the winter months of 1941 – 1942 by the crushing defeat of the German forces near Moscow, supplemented by the blows of the Red Army near Rostov and Tikhvin. All the political, strategic and economic calculations of the Nazi command collapsed. Back in mid-October, 1941, Hitler admitted to the meeting at the rate: "On June 22, we opened the door and did not know what was behind it."
The defeat near Moscow turned out to be a tremendous shock for Germany. The military-political significance of this event lies primarily in the fact that the “blitzkrieg” - the basis of the “Barbarossa” plan - has suffered a complete failure. And a long war did not promise the Nazi command any chance of success. In political terms, the defeat of the Wehrmacht near Moscow dispelled the myth of its invincibility and finally consolidated the foundation of the anti-German coalition, caused immense moral damage to the bloc of fascist states, had a sobering effect on the pro-Hitler circles in neutral states and gave a powerful impetus to the development of a broad anti-fascist struggle of the peoples. For the Soviet people, 1941 was the year of the most severe tests. He accomplished the greatest historic feat — by his heroism, patriotism, self-sacrificing work and struggle, he erected near Moscow a barrier to Nazi aggression.
STALINGRAD "GOLGOFA"
In the coming 1942 year, the chances of success in the war against the Soviet Union for the Nazi command were much reduced. Now it was not able to conduct an offensive on all fronts. But there were no hopes of crushing the Red Army in one strategic direction at all. The head of the operational department, General Heusinger, testifies to the confusion that arose at the General Staff of the ground forces after the defeat near Moscow: “Halder thought for a long time whether it was better for us to finally move to the East to defend, because the new offensive was superior to our forces. But, first, it was impossible to give a hint about this before Hitler, and secondly, what would it give? If we had given a respite to the Russians and looked at how the threat from America was increasing, we would give the initiative to the enemy and would never be able to seize it. So we had no choice but to make another attempt, despite all doubts. ”
5 April 1942, Hitler signed the Wehrmacht’s summer-fall campaign plan developed by the General Staff (Operation Blau). He again set an impossible task - “to finally destroy the forces that were still at the disposal of the Soviets”, to seize the most important Soviet military-economic centers by conducting a broad offensive on the southern flank of the front towards the Caucasus and Stalingrad and after achieving strategic goals in the south to take Leningrad, so that cut off the Soviet Union on the northern and southern flank of the supply from the outside.
Like the beginning of the war, the Nazi command again miscalculated the assessment of the forces of the Red Army and the capabilities of the military industry of the Soviet Union. A large number of Soviet defense enterprises managed to be saved from capture by the enemy and evacuated to the east. Isn't it surprising that, despite the loss of the most important industrial areas of the Soviet Union in the initial period of the war, in 1942, the production of weapons for Soviet troops was much increased compared to the second half of 1941 (tanks - 2,3 times, artillery - - in 1,8, machine guns and anti-tank guns - 3 times). By May 6, the combat capability of the Soviet troops who opposed the enemy was significantly increased. They numbered about 1942 million, about 5,3 tanks, 5000 40 guns and mortars, 700 aircraft. By the same time, the German command launched against the Red Army 2500 million people, 5,3 tanks and assault guns, 3230 aircraft, 3395 56 guns and mortars. The 940 of the German divisions were to advance at a front of 100 km from Kursk to Taganrog. For the spring and summer of 600, the Soviet command developed a strategic defense plan with private offensive operations near Leningrad, in the Demyansk region, in Smolensk and Lgov-Kursk sectors, in the Kharkiv region and in the Crimea.
28 June, the German command launched Operation Blau - delivering the main strategic strike on the Soviet army from the area east of Kursk in the direction of the Don and from the Kharkov region in the direction of Rostov. Began a new grand battle of the Second World War. The troops of Army Group "B" first managed to achieve some success - to go to the Caucasus and the Volga. But on this her offensive outburst dried up. The main strategic goal set by Hitler on 1942 year was not achieved. Soviet troops fully preserved their combat effectiveness. The seizure of the oil wealth of the Caucasus, the invasion of Iran and Iraq, the involvement of Turkey in the war, the establishment of contact with the armed forces of Japan - all this turned out to be a chimera. And on the German troops of the southern wing of the Soviet-German front, an unprecedented military catastrophe near Stalingrad was imminent. Such was the disappointing strategic balance of 1942 of the year for Hitler and his strategists. Halder was removed from his post as chief of the general staff, and Colonel-General Zeitzler was appointed in his place, as if this could help Germany continue to triumph on the Eastern Front. To complete the summer-autumn campaign, Hitler decided to take Stalingrad, to present it as the central achievement of 1942 of the year. The diary of his adjutant, General Engel, contains the following entry from October 2: “The Zeitzler, as well as Jodl, raise the question of whether to postpone the capture of Stalingrad in the second place, to free up forces, and refer to street battles that require great sacrifice. The Fuhrer sharply objects and stresses that the taking of Stalingrad is extremely necessary not only for operational but also for psychological reasons, to influence the world community and the mood of the allies. ”
In the winter of 1942 / 43, the Red Army won a brilliant new victory in the Battle of Stalingrad - the 300-thousandth group of German troops were defeated. The battle on the Volga, as Joachim Wieder correctly wrote - a former officer of the 6 Army attacking Stalingrad, "was a kind of dress rehearsal for the complete political, ideological and moral collapse of Nazism." He called the Wehrmacht Stalingrad catastrophe "The Calvary of the German Army", which "overshadowed all the military tragedies of the past." After Stalingrad, Nazi Germany lost its strategic initiative in World War II. An attempt to regain possession of her in the battle of Kursk in July 1943, ended in a grand failure. From now on, the Red Army had the opportunity to launch a strategic offensive across the entire Soviet-German front.
DEATH OF NAZISM
The victories at Stalingrad and Kursk dramatically worsened the military-political and international situation of fascist Germany. They caused a deep crisis of the fascist coalition. And they allowed the Western allies to deploy active operations in North Africa. In May 1943, the armed struggle there ended with the defeat of the German-Italian group Rommel. Hitler's command was faced with the prospect of Italy’s withdrawal from the war. And in France, threatened the landing of Allied forces.
From 1943, the Red Army launched a non-stop attack on all strategic directions of the Soviet-German front. It ended with the capture of Berlin. "Hike to the East" led to a national catastrophe in Germany.
Pathetic was the end of the Fuhrer of the Third Empire and his clique. Here's how Hitler's adjutant Otto Gunshe described the last minutes of the Nazi stakes: “We once again greeted the Fuhrer, after which he went with Eva Brown to his room and closed the door. Goebbels, Axman, Hevel, Kempka, and I stood in the corridor, waiting. It took about 10 minutes, which seemed like an eternity. Silence broke shot. A few seconds later Goebbels opened the door, and we entered the room. The Fuhrer shot himself in the mouth and, moreover, saw through a vial of poison. The skull was torn apart and looked scary. Eva Brown did not use her gun. She took poison. We wrapped the Fuhrer’s head with a blanket. Goebbels, Axman, and Kempka carried the corpses up the stairs to the park ... Then, together with Kempka, I poured gasoline over the bodies and threw a burning rag from the entrance to the bunker. Instantly both corpses were in flames. ”
Hitler and his Wehrmacht came to the Soviet land with a sword, they died by the sword. Majestic looks feat of the Soviet people and the Soviet soldier. In a fierce four-year combat with the war machine of contenders for world domination, they withstood and defeated the enemy, saved the Motherland from enslavement. On the altar of victory, they brought extremely high casualties, far greater than all the European countries that had participated in World War II, taken together. The Nazis could not bring the Soviet people to their knees, despite the fact that they used against them the enormous economic potential not only of Germany, but of all European countries captured in 1938 – 1941.
A huge role in the victory belongs to the Soviet High Command and the General Staff, our illustrious commanders and military leaders.
At the same time, we must not forget that the High Command was headed by Stalin - this is an immutable fact of history that no one can dispute. Even taking into account the fact that Stalin’s work as head of state caused considerable damage to the people and the reputation of socialism.
The world would have been waiting for a catastrophe if Germany had won, if it had triggered the Ost Master Plan, if the war had continued for many more years, if not decades, and had been transferred to the American and African continents, to the Near and Middle East, India It was the Soviet people and their armed forces that put an end to the Nazi expansion and Hitler's plans to conquer world domination.