WONDER PALACE
(A fairy tale turned into reality)
In which city - we will find out later, on what days - we will tell at the end, near the big blue river a miraculous palace has grown. Previously, fairy tales were only made up about such magical castles, songs were only sung about such palaces, but now it stands - alive and bright. And to get into it, you need to be the "crown prince of the proletariat" - the pioneer of our great, rich and powerful country. The doors of this palace are always open for him! And here, under the fabulous roof, came, returning from school, two friends - pioneers - Volodya and Vasya. In the palace, the last work on the equipment was being completed. A few more days - and the bells of children's voices will sound within its walls, the youth of the country will flow in a noisy wave.
The friends pushed open the front oak door and found themselves in the lobby. Here, directly opposite them, there was an aquarium, the water of the fountain was softly falling. And on the sides, on pedestals made of polished walnut, stood two antique figures of black-headed wrestlers trimmed in bronze. The walls are decorated with paintings from ancient Pompeii: in an ornament of painted fresh flowers - a mythical winged lion and vases. There is a mirror above the marble fireplace and high candelabra on both sides.
The friends, fascinated by what they saw, went further along the marching marble staircase. At the foot of it stood a candelabrum with torch-shaped tulips, and a milky-pink wall stretched along it. On the first landing there is a multi-colored window: red, blue, yellow and orange pieces of glass. The pioneers ran through all four floors of the palace. The voice that shouted "welcome" to them turned into dozens of inviting gentle voices. This attracted the pioneers of 38 palace rooms.
Here, here, to me, to a room the color of the sea!
Here, friends! My walls are as fresh as a green meadow!
Come to me guys! I am lemon-colored! I have many toys!
And how beautiful I am, crimson!
Light gray!
Orange!
Dairy!
Blue as the sky!
Volodya first found himself in a light gray room of fine arts. In it, he saw a statue of Hercules, Venus de Milo and other sculptures of the ancient world. Small easels, paints, brushes! Volodya is an artist. He took a brush and painted a turquoise sky and a blinding sun. And he called the picture: "My pioneer life."
In a lemon-colored room for Octobrists, he found models of a railroad, steamboats, and clockwork tanks. Locomotives with carriages ran along tiny rails, tanks crawled from corner to corner.
In the reading room, with an oak panel of walls, where there were busts of ancient philosophers - Homer, Sophocles and Socrates, and nearby - in the book depository, Volodya looked at interesting children's books.
Then Volodya entered the dark orange room and saw there busts of writers: Pushkin, Gogol, Maxim Gorky, Demyan Bedny and others. Room for young writers. Volodya looks at the bust of Maxim Gorky and fancies him that the great writer is asking:
Well, how? Satisfied, pioneer? What a palace! What a luxury! How many books!
And Volodya answers:
It's a living fairy tale, Alexey Maksimovich! The palace is ours! And books are so breathtaking! Remember how in childhood your mother beat you for taking a ruble and buying books with it, and taking Andersen's fairy tales from you? Your childhood was dark, you will not envy.
What am I? Who am I talking to? - Volodya caught himself, glanced at the window, and there the night had already blurred.
Where is Vasya? Vasya, whoa?
And Vasya, meanwhile, found himself in a room of high-quality metals. Here - a small open-hearth furnace, blooming and you can clearly see how steel is brewed.
Then he moved to the laboratory of artistic carving, to the rooms of young tourists, naturalists, music, ballet and found himself in a two-room small printing house. It contains fonts, paper cutting and printing machines. Everything in order to type and print a children's newspaper.
And here is the naval office. Models of ships, submarines, maps of the seas and oceans.
Chu! What? Hum? Noise? Why, this is a tractor !!
Vasya is in the auto-tractor laboratory. A real tractor. All his insides are revealed. Gearbox! Motor! Tractor model "STZ-3"!
Attention! Now you will listen to the Paris radio station.
Vasya went up to the mezzanine. There is a radio center here. The best receivers. You can listen to Moscow, all the cities of the USSR, Paris, London, Warsaw and other major European centers.
Vasya ran past the physics and mathematics study, home study room, recreation areas, and climbed the stairs to the third floor. And what a staircase! Oak parapets - and they have 16 multi-colored windows!
In search of each other, the friends simultaneously ran into the white room from opposite sides.
And froze on the threshold. What shine! How much light! The parquet floor is transparent like a mirror. Their eyes were presented with a huge hall in the Empire style, four marble columns with bronze capitals (the upper part of the columns). There are two large crystal chandeliers and four small chandeliers in the hall. The ceiling is in plaster bas-reliefs, the walls are in high reliefs (round sculptures). Purple silk curtains on the windows. Around a long polished table are soft little, also purple-silk, armchairs. On the walls are portraits of Lenin, Stalin, Molotov and Voroshilov, and on a special pedestal is a bust of Lenin's own grandfather. In this hall there will be costume balls for children, Christmas trees, evenings of mass games and dances.
When they went out into the street, the stars trembled in the night sky. The blue river turned black, and on it the lights of boats moved and blinked quietly. Ball-shaped lanterns burned on pedestals at the two entrance doors of the palace, two-horned lanterns along the sidewalk. Electric vases glowed on the roof and the neon tubes glowed with two joyful words: - The Palace of Pioneers.
***
This tale has come true. In the city named after Stalin, on Leninskaya street, not far from the banks of the beautiful Volga, in the former building of the city party committee, on the initiative of comrade Vareikis, a luxurious Palace of Pioneers was equipped. It opens on May 5th. A wonderful Stalinist gift for our happy children!
In the days of the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Stalingrad, which became a turning point in the course of the Great Patriotic War, it is time to recall some common judgments about this battle and compare them with known facts. The degree of reliability and validity of these judgments, as we shall see, will be different.
First: at Stalingrad, the German army suffered the largest defeat in its history.
This is true only in relation to those battles of the Second World War that took place before Stalingrad, the battles of the First World War and the wars of the 19th century, except for Napoleonic ones. According to the German general K. Tippelskirch, near Stalingrad "something incomprehensible happened, not experienced since 1806 - the death of the army surrounded by the enemy." In 1806, in the battles of Jena and Auerstedt, the Prussian army was completely destroyed by the French army of Napoleon. Before the catastrophe at Stalingrad, the Germans never experienced anything like this again. But after Stalingrad, such and even larger defeats of the German troops ceased to be an exception.
Second: at Stalingrad, the Soviet army carried out the largest operation in the world history of wars to encircle enemy troops.
This is not true, since before Stalingrad, the Germans repeatedly carried out successful operations to encircle and destroy much larger groupings of Soviet troops. In the first week of the Great Patriotic War near Minsk, the troops of two armies of the Soviet Western Front were surrounded, and the Germans alone took more than 300 thousand people. In the fall of 1941, during operations first near Kiev, then near Vyazma and Bryansk, the Germans each time managed to capture more than 650 thousand Soviet soldiers and officers. The total number of the grouping of German, Romanian and Croatian troops surrounded at Stalingrad was, according to modern estimates, 280 thousand people.
Third: Hitler strove to take Stalingrad by all means because of its name.
In the plans of the German command for 1942, priority was given to the capture of the Caucasus. After the fighting in early July, it considered it possible to take Stalingrad with the forces of one 6th Army and reoriented the 4th Panzer Army also to the Caucasian direction. Only at the end of August 1942, it transferred it back to the Stalingrad direction. Hitler justified his desire to seize Stalingrad, against the backdrop of a failed offensive in the Caucasus, by the fact that the main route for the transportation of Caucasian oil allegedly runs along the Volga. However, many commanders of the Wehrmacht after the war explained Hitler's stubbornness in the capture of this city precisely by the magic of its name. Before the start of the Soviet offensive, many of them suggested that Hitler withdraw his troops from Stalingrad to the line of the lower Don in advance, to which he did not agree.
Fourth: the Germans during the offensive on Stalingrad significantly outnumbered the Soviet troops in the number of forces and means.
Unfortunately, even in the summer of 1942, the Soviet command has not always and not everywhere learned the lessons from the defeats of the previous year and was inferior to the enemy in the ability to use the materiel. Before the start of the battle in the big bend of the Don at the end of July 1942, 300 thousand soldiers of the 62nd and 64th Soviet armies acted against 270 thousand soldiers and officers of the 6th German army, against 3400 enemy guns and mortars - 5000 Soviet, against 400 German tanks - 1000 Soviet.
July 26 I.V. Stalin and Chief of the General Staff A.M. Vasilevsky sent a telegram: to the command of the Stalingrad Front expressing indignation at his actions: “The front has a threefold superiority in tanks, absolute predominance in aviation [it was true - Ya. B.]. If desired and skill, it was possible to smash the enemy to smithereens. " Meanwhile, in the course of their unsuccessfully executed counterattack, the front forces lost 450 tanks in just three days, that is, almost half of their total number.
Fifth: The Stalingrad direction was the main one in the winter campaign of 1942/43.
The bulk of both Soviet and German troops by the winter of 1942/43 was concentrated, as the data on their numbers show, in the central direction, west of Moscow. And the main operation of the Red Army in the winter campaign was planned exactly there - near Rzhev and Vyazma. However, it ended in failure. At Stalingrad, however, Soviet troops managed to make a strategic breakthrough of the enemy's front. This led to a shift in the center of gravity of subsequent operations to the south.
Sixth: there was no point in stubborn defense of Stalingrad; Soviet troops only suffered large, unjustified losses there.
By November 1942, the completely destroyed Stalingrad was not an economically important object. But he was in an important strategic position. Full mastery of it would allow the Germans to withdraw a significant mass of troops from Stalingrad to the rear. In this case, Stalingrad could not have played the role of a strategic trap for the German army, and the Soviet troops would not have been able to win such a significant victory under it. In addition, the capture of Stalingrad by the Germans, renowned by their propaganda to the whole world, would undoubtedly greatly raise their morale and, at the same time, reduce that of the Soviet troops and people. The magic of the name of the city played a role not only for the Nazi, but also for the Soviet leadership. But it was Napoleon who deduced such a formula that in war the moral factor is correlated with the material one in a ratio of three to one.
Seventh: if the Germans took Stalingrad, Japan and Turkey would go to war against Soviet Union.
Although there were no clear plans or obligations of Japan and / or Turkey to start a war against the USSR in this case, the factor of such a possibility was taken into account by the Soviet leadership and undoubtedly played some role in the determination to defend Stalingrad to the last.
Eighth: the Germans had the opportunity to withdraw the army of Paulus from the encirclement and save it from death, but for some unknown reason they did not do this.
When, in mid-December 1942, the tank group of General Goth covered two-thirds of the distance separating it from the 6th Army surrounded at Stalingrad, Paulus could only break through to meet it. The opinions of memoirists and historians as to why the order for a breakthrough was not issued differ. Some blame Paulus's indecision for everything, others - Field Marshal Manstein, commander of Army Group Don, and others - Hitler. Some argue that Hitler forbade Paulus to break through and specifically sacrificed the 6th Army in order to create a symbol of heroic resistance out of it (it is not clear, then, however, why he organized a deblocking strike).
Most likely, the Germans were waiting for the troops of Goth to approach the encircled units even closer in order to act with confidence. But the stubborn resistance of the Soviet troops (this episode of the war is described in the famous novel by Yu. Bondarev “ Hot Snow») Thwarted these calculations. As a result, as it turned out later, the Germans irretrievably missed the most favorable moment for the oncoming breakthrough.
On February 2, 2018, Russia celebrates the 75th anniversary of the defeat of the Nazi troops at Stalingrad.
Until now, disputes about the significance of this grandiose battle in world history do not subside, and myths, cliches and outright lies are invariable companions of almost any mention of the Battle of Stalingrad. Let's try to separate the wheat from the chaff?
"FOR PEOPLE WITH STEEL HEARTS"
History cannot be fooled, you cannot turn it back. But you can retouch it in the right color and turn something in the right way. Especially if the Second World War ended long ago, and a new generation has grown up, brought up on Hollywood blockbusters and preferring computer games to documentary historical prose.
At first everything was honest and straightforward. Almost all newspapers, magazines, films and radio broadcasts of the Allied countries after the defeat of the Wehrmacht at Stalingrad spoke the truth. The New York Times of February 7, 1943 reported:
“The final destruction of the remnants of the German army at Stalingrad was the end of a story that will be remembered for generations. In this great war there has never been such a fierce siege and such unyielding resistance. "
Roosevelt then declared: the most significant changes in the Second World War took place in Stalingrad. Churchill sent to the USSR a sword forged by a special decree of King George VI with an engraved inscription: "People with hearts of steel - the citizens of Stalingrad as a sign of respect for them of the English people."
But later everything changed.
THE MYTH OF LOCAL VALUE
The main lie about Stalingrad, imposed on the world by the West today, is that the battle on the Volga did not play a key role in World War II and was local, says Mikhail Myagkov, scientific director of the Russian Military Historical Society. - Allegedly, the main battle took place in North Africa, in El Alamein. But these military actions are incomparable neither in losses, nor in military efforts.
Indeed, in Stalingrad battle from the side of the Red Army, about 1 million soldiers participated, they were also opposed by the millionth German-Romanian group. At El Alamein, 220,000 British, French and Greeks fought against 115,000 Germans and Italians.
From July 1942 to February 1943 in North Africa, the Italo-German block lost in killed and wounded no more than 40 thousand people. During the same time, at least 760 thousand enemy soldiers were put out of action in the area between the Don and Volga rivers.
If the catastrophe at Stalingrad caused a three-day mourning in Germany, like an unprecedented defeat, then the "desert fox" himself, the German Field Marshal Rommel, spoke eloquently about the events near El Alamein: “Neither Hitler nor the General Staff related to the operation in North Africa especially serious. "
SAVING LAND LEASE?
The idea that the supply of weapons by the Allies to the Red Army played a key role in the Battle of Stalingrad is widespread both in the West and in our country. Of course, there is some truth in this statement.
The Allies began to supply military equipment to the USSR in the winter of 1941. And this was a significant aid for the Red Army, exhausted in heavy battles. But the complete truth is that by the beginning of the battle on the Volga, the agreed delivery programs to the USSR were fulfilled by the Americans and the British only by 55%.
In 1941-1942, the USSR received only 7% of the cargo sent from the United States to different countries during the war years. The bulk of weapons and other materials were received by the Soviet Union only in 1944-1945 - after a radical change in the course of the war.
THE TRAGEDY OF PEACEFULS
Of course, not everything that is said about the Battle of Stalingrad in the Western press or in some Russian media is untrue. One of the most difficult pages of Stalingrad is the tragedy of civilians who were not evacuated from the city before the start of the battle.
According to some data, by the summer of 1942, 490 thousand people lived in Stalingrad. From February to May 1942, thousands of evacuated Leningraders were added to them. According to some Volgograd journalists, by the summer of 1942 there were more than 600 thousand people in the city.
According to members of the "Children of Military Stalingrad" society, Stalin did not allow the evacuation of civilians and even children. He believed that Soviet soldiers would fight better, knowing that behind them were the defenseless inhabitants of the city.
According to other sources, there was no official ban on the evacuation, but it began too late. They managed to ferry only 100 thousand people across the Volga. The civilians who remained in the city died during fierce battles.
SWITCHING TO THE SIDE OF THE VERMACHT
Another of the "inconvenient" pages of the Stalingrad epic is the transfer of a large number of Soviet soldiers to the 6th German Army. According to Western historians Manfred Kerig and Rüdiger Overmans, every fifth soldier in the Paulus army was Russian.
Already in September 1942, when the first German offensive on Stalingrad was stopped, the political departments and departments of the NKVD of the armies near Stalingrad began to receive reports from the front that "former Soviet servicemen" were often fighting against them.
It is believed that at the most dramatic moment of the Stalingrad epic, about 50 thousand Russians went over to the side of the Germans. Most Russian historians believe that this figure is greatly overestimated.
The documents of the 6th Army mention 20 thousand so-called hivis (Hilfswilliger - German for "willing to help"). These are people who were captured and did dirty work in the German troops. The Germans usually did not trust them with weapons.
NO STEP BACK!
On July 28, 1942, Stalin's famous order No. 227 "Not a step back!" Was issued, forbidding retreat without an order, forming penal battalions, as well as barrage detachments, which were allowed to shoot alarmists, deserters and cowards on the spot.
Some historians and publicists believe that it was largely thanks to this order of the Red Army that it was possible to stop the German offensive near Stalingrad. Historian and writer Alexei Isaev, author of the book "Myths and Truth about Stalingrad", believes that the role of the order "Not one step back!" in the Battle of Stalingrad, it is greatly exaggerated: “The defensive detachments were usually formed not from units of the NKVD, but from cadets of military schools. But there were few of them, and there was no sense in them on the streets of Stalingrad. More often than not, the detachments acted like ordinary rifle subunits. "
Nevertheless, according to official data, by order No. 227, about 13.5 thousand soldiers were shot during the battles in Stalingrad, which corresponds to almost an entire rifle division. The commander of the 62nd Army, Vasily Chuikov, said: "In a burning city, we cannot afford a guard watch for cowards."
One of the curious trends of recent years is the promotion of negative clichés about our history in computer games. Western programmers have already created a whole universe of military battles.
For example, the game based on the events of the Battle of Stalingrad Call of Duty is very popular all over the world, in which three Red Army soldiers are given one rifle and sent to the attack, making them wait until an armed soldier is killed so that his comrades can pick up weapons. The soldiers are being driven into the attack by the detachments of the NKVD, who urge them on with machine-gun bursts and shouts: "Stalin ordered, damn it, just go ahead!"
There is another game - about the Second world war, in which the Red Army does not exist, as if the USSR did not take part in the war against Hitler.
In another popular game, all the exploits of Soviet soldiers are reduced to the execution of deserters, while the Americans land in Normandy and liberate Europe from the Nazis, and the Russians, as always, have nothing to do with it.
Computer games reach hundreds of millions of people, - says the deputy head of the scientific and methodological department of the Victory Museum Sergey Belov, - the data entered into them are replicated all over the world and are projected onto the consciousness of schoolchildren. It is necessary to expand the range of domestic games, to create true stories about the Second World War, in which Russia would be adequately represented.
Elena Khakimova.
RIA Novosti / A. Kapustyansky.
On December 20, 1942, German tanks reached the small frozen river Myshkov. From there to Stalingrad and the 6th Army of General Paulus surrounded in it, some 35-40 kilometers remained. One of their participants, Yuri Bondarev, described the fierce battles going on there in the novel Hot Snow, based on which director Gavriil Egiazarov made a film of the same name - one of the best Soviet films about that War ...
Infantry cadet with the soul of an artilleryman
The main characters of Bondarev are gunners, and the story is told on behalf of the commander of the fire platoon of the battery, Lieutenant Nikolai Kuznetsov.
Meanwhile, the author himself began his military career not at all as an officer or as an artilleryman. In the summer of 1942, the 18-year-old Bondarev was sent to the 2nd Berdichev Infantry School, but did not manage to get the rank - in October the cadets were urgently sent to the front, near Stalingrad.
There, yesterday's cadet became the commander of a mortar crew, in December near Kotelnikov he was wounded, wounded, frostbite and got into the "gods of war" after the hospital, and became an officer only towards the end of the war.
In 1967, when Bondarev, collecting material for a future novel, tried to meet with von Manstein in Munich, the 80-year-old Nazi field marshal refused to meet, citing poor health.
According to Bondarev, he himself did not really regret that the attempt had failed. He admitted that he “felt for him what he had twenty-five years ago when he fired at his tanks in the unforgettable days of 1942. I understood why this "undefeated on the battlefield" did not want to meet with a Russian soldier. "
Why exactly Manstein
The 6th Army was considered one of the most efficient in the Wehrmacht. It was she who was instructed to wipe the city on the Volga from the face. Did not work out. More than 330 thousand German soldiers and officers were surrounded, and Field Marshal Erich von Manstein was instructed to rescue them.
Why exactly to him? Behind him was the authorship of the victorious 1940 campaign against France, the occupation of Crimea in 1941 and the capture of Sevastopol in 1942. Hitler considered him the best military strategist: if Manstein fails, no one will.
Field Marshal hastily formed Army Group Don. It included several large formations, the most powerful of which was the tank group of General Hermann Goth. The operation was named in German grandiosely - Wintergewitter ("Winter thunderstorm").
Corporate identity: hit where you didn't expect
The offensive began on December 12, 1942. The Germans almost immediately broke through the outer ring of the encirclement in the Kotelnichesky direction, literally sweeping away the 302nd Infantry Division of the 51st Army of General Nikolai Trufanov and breaking free into the operational space.
The Soviet command was expecting a strike, but to the west, from Nizhne-Chirskaya. There, on the middle Don, the distance to the 6th Army was only 40 kilometers.
As a result, Manstein managed to outplay the Soviet generals Andrei Eremenko (Stalingrad Front) and Nikolai Vatutin (Southwestern Front). He took a longer route and struck from the south. On December 13, Gotha's tankmen reached the Aksai River, passing a quarter of the way to Stalingrad. There was very little left, and the encirclement ring would have been broken.
How General Volsky managed to surprise first Stalin and then Gotha
Attack of Soviet tanks KV-1 of the Stalingrad Front with the support of infantry.
To eliminate the breakthrough, the Stavka hastily transferred the 2nd Guards Army of General Rodion Malinovsky. But she had to march almost 300 kilometers in a forced march in winter, and before her approach the enemy had to somehow be delayed.
The command assigned this task to the 4th Mechanized Corps of General Vasily Volsky, separate tank regiments and the 20th Anti-Tank Artillery Brigade.
Before telling how General Volsky managed to surprise the Germans, it is in no way possible to keep silent about the incident in which he managed to surprise ... Stalin himself.
The fact is that on the eve of the counter-offensive at Stalingrad, in November 1942, Volsky sent a letter to Stalin, which could have enormous consequences. At least for Vasily Timofeevich himself.
Here is what Marshal Alexander Vasilevsky told about this letter in a conversation with Konstantin Simonov: “Volsky wrote to Stalin something like the following. Dear Comrade Stalin. I consider it my duty to inform you that I do not believe in the success of the upcoming offensive (operations to encircle and defeat Paulus's army - ed.). We do not have enough strength and resources for him. I am convinced that we will not be able to break through the German defenses and fulfill the task set before us. That this whole operation could end in disaster, that such a catastrophe would cause innumerable consequences, bring us losses, adversely affect the entire situation of the country, and after that the Germans could end up not only on the Volga, but also beyond the Volga ...
As an honest party member, Volsky asked to check the reality of the decisions made, and, perhaps, to completely abandon the operation.
The letter reached the addressee, but fortunately, neither the author himself nor the developers of the plan for Operation Uranus, which was victorious for us, suffered. General Volsky took part in our counteroffensive, and subsequently he was repeatedly awarded and promoted in rank. It was he who made Goth "turn around".
An active defense was imposed on the Nazis: Volsky's tankers from all sides, including from the rear, counterattacked Goth's divisions. This "revolving battle", as the Germans dubbed it (the opponents changed places several times, storming the heights south of Verkhne-Kumsky), lasted for five whole days.
Then on December 19, Goth brought the 17th Panzer Division into battle. She broke through the right flank of the Soviet defense, threatening the 4th mechanized corps with encirclement. With a heavy heart, Volsky was forced to withdraw his units to the next line of defense - the Myshkov River.
From there, to the Paulus grouping, Manstein's tankmen had some 35 kilometers left. But time was won - behind the back of the 4th corps, the 8th and 3rd Guards Rifle Divisions of Malinovsky's army had already taken up defenses and the infantry units of the 5th Shock Army, reinforced by two tank brigades, were deployed.
"Thunderstorm" was, but "thunder" did not strike
Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus (left), commander of the Wehrmacht 6th Army encircled in Stalingrad, chief of staff Lieutenant General Arthur Schmidt and his adjutant Wilhelm Adam after surrender. Stalingrad, Beketovka, the headquarters of the Soviet 64th Army.
One of the important parts of the "Winter Thunderstorm" was the Donnerschlag (Thunderbolt) plan, according to which the 6th Army had to go from the "cauldron" to a breakthrough, break through to the Donskaya Tsaritsa River and join up with Manstein's troops. But the paradox was that the commander of the surrounded himself did not dare to take such a step.
After reviewing the plan, the chief of staff of the 6th Army, General Arthur Schmidt, replied to the field marshal that this would lead to complete disaster. And Paulus agreed with him, referring to the fact that the Fuhrer categorically forbade him to leave Stalingrad. The commander of Army Group Don did not insist.
Could 6th Army break through to Manstein's troops? This is still debated in historical forums. It is only known that the surrounded group had only 30 kilometers of fuel left. In addition, as soon as Paulus began to break through, he was immediately attacked from all sides by Soviet units, watching for the slightest changes in the front line. The risk was too great and the resources were too scarce.
A day for four days and mothballs instead of snow
Goth's tanks rained down on Soviet positions on the northern bank of the Myshkovo River. In Bondarev's novel and the film based on him, our artillerymen, infantrymen and tankers beat them off for exactly one day, after which, after waiting for the Germans to run out of steam, General Bessonov (in the film he was wonderfully played by Georgy Zhzhenov) introduces a fresh tank corps into battle and throws back the enemy.
In fact, the battles lasted not one day, but four, from 20 to 24 December. Scary and dramatic. With tank attacks and repeated bombing of our positions.
The snow was really hot here - from the flames of destroyed tanks, explosions of aerial bombs and shots of artillery guns. Having occupied a bridgehead on the northern bank of the river, the Germans tried to expand it several times and each time they rolled back.
By the end of the film, the viewer also believed that the snow was hot - against the background of destroyed tanks, destroyed trenches and message trenches. The fact is that during the filming of the famous film with snow, a problem arose.
They filmed battles at a tank range near Novosibirsk, relying on local frosts and heavy snow. And at first Siberia justified itself even more than enough: the shooting equipment was out of order from the cold.
But in March, winter suddenly ended and the snow began to melt quickly. I had to bring a whole car of naphthalene and sprinkle it on the “trenches”. The smell was eerie, but only the filming participants knew about it.
The final picture was filmed in Alabino near Moscow in late April - early May. The weather was already summer. And according to the recollections of the actors, they literally melted in their greatcoats and quilted jackets. But there was no naphthalene. Here snow was represented by chalk and lime ...
The end of the "Winter Thunderstorm"
The German Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter jet in the center of Stalingrad was knocked out and landed on a forced landing (the aircraft had its landing gear lowered). Summer 1943.
And then, in 1942, the fate of the "Winter Thunderstorm" was decided not on Myshkova, but 250 kilometers northwest. According to Manstein's plan, there were to be two unblocking strikes: the main one was delivered by Goth, and the auxiliary one, from Nizhne-Chirskaya, was by General Karl-Adolf Hollidt.
But there, the troops of the Southwestern Front, together with the 6th Army of the Voronezh Front, went on the offensive on December 16 and during Operation Little Saturn broke through the enemy's defenses, which were held by Germany's allies - Italians and Romanians.
General Hollidt, whose flank was dangerously exposed, was no longer up to Stalingrad. Soviet units approached the city of Kamensk-Shakhtinsky, aiming at Rostov-on-Don.
Manstein realized that a strategic catastrophe was brewing: Army Group A, which included Don, could be cut off from North Caucasus and surrounded. It was necessary to urgently strengthen the crumbling Chirsk front.
On November 19, 1942, Soviet troops at Stalingrad launched a counteroffensive (Operation Uranus) and 4 days later closed the encirclement around the 6th German Army of General Friedrich Paulus operating in the Stalingrad region. Thus, a radical change began in the Great Patriotic War in favor of the Soviet Union. A number of myths are associated with this most important event of the war in Soviet and Russian historiography, which are refuted upon closer acquaintance with the facts.
These are the myths.
First, the Red Army and its commanders, by the time the Stalingrad offensive began, had learned how to fight and acted decisively and skillfully.
Secondly, the strike at Stalingrad was completely unexpected for the Germans, since the preparations for it were kept in absolute secrecy.
Thirdly, this blow was the only main blow of the Red Army in the autumn-winter campaign of 1942.
And finally, fourthly, Marshal Zhukov played a decisive role in planning and carrying out the Stalingrad counteroffensive.
In addition, we like to talk about 91 thousand prisoners captured during the surrender at Stalingrad, but they ignore the question of how many of Paulus's soldiers and officers were able to return home after the war.
How was it really? This is what the special department of the Stalingrad Front reported about the first day of the Soviet counteroffensive (and the most truthful reports about the situation at the front are the reports of special officers, since they were not responsible for the course of hostilities): growth; if it were not for the cloudiness, which did not allow the enemy to widely use aviation, then our units would have suffered heavy losses ... In the 13th mechanized corps, 34 tanks were out of order, 27 of them were blown up by enemy mines. "
It is not surprising that our tankers suffered heavy losses. After all, they had to be guided by the idiotic order of Comrade Stalin of September 19, 1942, which instructed "the tank units of the Field Army, from the moment they approached the combat formations of their infantry, to begin the enemy attack with powerful fire on the move from all tank weapons, both from guns and from machine guns, not to be afraid that the shooting will not always be aimed. Shooting from tanks on the move should be the main type of fire effect of our tanks on the enemy and, above all, on his main force. " Since stabilizers, which made it possible to conduct targeted firing from tank guns, appeared only in the 50s, Stalin's order doomed tankers to firing into the white world as a pretty penny and a waste of shells.
Nor can it be said that the Germans knew nothing in advance about the Soviet counteroffensive. As the famous Reinhard Gehlen, the famous Reinhard Gehlen, the former head of the East Department of the East of the German military intelligence, noted in his memoirs, “On November 4, 1942, an important report was received from the Abwehr. Stalin, which was attended by twelve marshals and generals ... It was decided to carry out all the planned offensive operations before November 15, as far as weather conditions permit. The main blows: from Grozny in the direction of Mozdok, in the area of Lower and Upper Mamon in the Don region, near Voronezh, Rzhev, south of Lake Ilmen and near Leningrad. "
There are also references to this report in the works of German and other foreign researchers. Hitler and other leaders of the Wehrmacht were reported on November 7. There would be enough time to withdraw the 6th Army from Stalingrad. In fact, the Soviet troops were originally supposed to go on the offensive at Stalingrad for more early dates(in one of Zhukov's reports to Stalin appears on November 15), and only a delay in the concentration of forces and means forced to postpone its start until November 19. In fact, the Soviet Southwestern Front struck the main blow not on its right wing, near the farmsteads of Verkhniy and Nizhniy Mamon, against the Italians, but on the left wing, against the Romanians. However, it is likely that initially a deeper coverage of the enemy and a strike on the right flank of the Southwestern Front was envisaged, as the unknown agent reported.
Today, most of the documents related to the planning of the Stalingrad counteroffensive remain secret. Therefore, they are absent in the just published two-volume documentary "Battle of Stalingrad" (Moscow: OLMA-Press, 2002). And in any case, a blow from the southwest threatened to cut off the German group at Stalingrad. However, Hitler did not want to withdraw his troops to the Don - this would mean recognizing the collapse of the strategy on the Eastern Front. Moreover, almost until the very day of the counter-offensive, the troops of the 6th Army continued active hostilities in Stalingrad, trying to throw Soviet units into the Volga. This deprived the German command of the opportunity to take at least palliative measures - to transfer part of the 6th Army's divisions from the city to strengthen the flanks defended by much less combat-ready Romanian units.
Marshal Zhukov, in his memoirs, claimed that he developed the idea of a counteroffensive together with Marshal Vasilevsky, and then directly coordinated his preparation. However, in reality, both the preparation and the direct command of the troops at the beginning of the Stalingrad counteroffensive was carried out by Vasilevsky. Zhukov, on the other hand, devoted most of his time to preparing the main attack of the 1942 campaign in the western direction. Reinhard Gehlen on November 6, even before he got acquainted with the report on the meeting in the Kremlin, asserted: "The main direction of future Russian operations ... is increasingly looming in the belt of Army Group Center." on the Don or they will limit their goals in the south for reasons that they will not be able to achieve success simultaneously in two directions due to lack of forces. in the near future - simultaneously with the expected offensive against Army Group Center - a major operation. "
The chief of German intelligence in the East underestimated the scale and speed of the concentration of Soviet troops in the southern sector of the front. But he was not mistaken that the offensive on the Don would be subsidiary to the offensive in the western direction. This is proved by the distribution of forces and means. The troops of the Western and Kalinin Fronts, which began on November 25 under the leadership of Zhukov, Operation Mars - the offensive on Rzhev, numbered, along with reserves in the rear, 1.9 million people, more than 24 thousand guns and mortars, 3300 tanks and 1100 aircraft. In the course of the operation, it was planned to defeat Army Group Center and reach the Baltic Sea. At that time, on the southern wing of the Soviet-German front, the Don, Stalingrad and Southwestern fronts had only 1.1 million people, 15 thousand guns and mortars, 1400 tanks and more than 900 aircraft. Only after the Zhukov offensive failed and the strike forces of the Kalinin and Western fronts were surrounded (having lost 1,850 tanks and half a million people, with great difficulty broke through to their own), the reserves were transferred to the south. The failed operation "Mars" was declared by Zhukov, and after him by Soviet historians, "auxiliary" in relation to the operation "Uranus" - the Stalingrad counteroffensive.
Not everything went smoothly in the course of the further Soviet offensive in the Stalingrad region. I would like to cite here one little-known episode. Beria reported to Stalin: "According to the Special Department of the NKVD of the Stalingrad Front, on the night of December 27, 1942, Major General Larin, a member of the Military Council of the 2nd Guards Army, shot himself in his apartment. Larin left a note with the following content:" moreover. Please do not touch my family. Rodion clever man... Long live Lenin. "Rodion - Commander of the 2nd Guards Army, Comrade Malinovsky. On December 19 of this year, leaving for the front line, Larin behaved nervously, walked to his full height and was lightly wounded by a bullet in the leg. that he was looking for death "(RGASPI, f. 83, op. 1, d. 19, l. 8).
Ivan Larin's suicide by no means stemmed from the military situation. The 2nd Guards successfully pressed against Manstein's tank group, which was rushing to the rescue of Paulus. Perhaps Larin feared that the special police would begin to spin the case of Malinovsky's adjutant, Captain Sirenko, who had deserted in August and went with two comrades across the front line to create an independent partisan detachment and fight the Germans. A report on this case was attached to the report of Lavrenty Pavlovich about Larin's suicide. Sirenko left a note where he claimed that “our generals showed themselves to be incapable of command, they were corrupted, drunk, and depraved, like the old libertine General Zhuk (Major General Zhuk was the deputy commander for artillery on the Southern Front and arrived at the front headquarters together with Malinovsky from 6 Army). That the generals carry with them different "wives" and "daughters", but simply carry prostitutes. Having seen all this, he, Sirenko, decided that he should actively fight the Germans for his homeland and decided to join the partisans "(RGASPI , f. 83, op. 1, d. 19, l. 11-12). And in the days of the Stalingrad victory, Soviet generals feared special officers more than Germans.
And in conclusion, it is worth recalling the tragic fate of the German prisoners captured in Stalingrad. Their position was no better than the position of Soviet prisoners in German camps during the tragic winter of 1941/1942. Of the 91 thousand German prisoners in Stalingrad (according to other sources, there were 110 thousand of them), only 5 thousand people survived. More than half of the survivors were officers: in the officer camps, food was better and more qualified medical care was provided. Tens of thousands of German soldiers died of hunger and epidemics, weakened also by 73 days of malnutrition in the "cauldron". According to the testimony of the few survivors, in the first days of captivity, they were often not only not given food, but even the last supplies were taken away. Many also could not stand the exhausting foot marches from the ruins of Stalingrad to the camps. As the German historian Rüdiger Overmans writes, "the overwhelming majority did not see any cruelty in the fact that the guards shot the laggards. It was still impossible to help them, and the shot was considered an act of mercy compared to slow death from the cold." He also admits that many soldiers, being too exhausted, would not have survived in captivity, even if the food was tolerable. Almost 20 thousand "accomplices" - former Soviet prisoners who served in auxiliary positions in the 6th Army - were also killed. They were shot or died in the camps.