Chapter 1.
Theoretical and methodological aspects of the problem
1.1. Liberation mission of the Red Army in 1944-1945.
as a historical phenomenon
TO Like the First World War, the Second World War was a war not only of armies, but also of states, countries and peoples, which was based on geopolitical goals - the global redistribution of spheres of influence and territories. At the same time, World War II is a unique war that has no analogues in human history. And not only in its scale and number of victims, but also in its essence and character. It was not only another struggle for the redivision of the world (now radical), not only for dominance in different regions the globe, but also an uncompromising death struggle between three alternative world order projects, three irreconcilable ideologies, three political and state forms that stood behind them and grew on their basis (with all internal differences), three centers of power. One of them - conventionally “liberal democratic” (backed mainly by the Anglo-Saxon elites - Great Britain and the USA) - had a long history, the other two - left-radical (communist) and right-radical (Nazi and fascist) - ideologically originating in the 19th century ., received the opportunity for political implementation, finally took shape, acquired state forms and became centers of power in the interwar period, and it was the course, outcome and consequences of the First World War that were the historical impetus and context for the rise to power of the left (in Russia) and the right (in Italy , Germany, and a number of other countries) radicals.
“Democratic” (Anglo-Saxon at its core, “Atlantic”) West, which pulled the Russian Empire into the First world war, who used it against the German, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires, was the only one who received an indisputable (albeit temporary) gain from the victory: Great Britain retained its colonial empire, and the United States, having thrown off the burden of debts to Europe, became a financial and economic giant, starting for the first time play an active role on the world stage as a great power. The Russian Empire and the empires of its opponents collapsed, burning in the “flames of revolution” and losing a significant part of the territories that fell under the direct or indirect control of the victors. Having suffered from liberalism and “democratic republicanism” after the overthrow of the monarchy, Russia, brought to economic collapse and the collapse of statehood, accepted left-wing radicalism (Bolshevism) as a lesser evil that turned out to be capable of reviving statehood, defeating all its opponents in the civil war, including foreign invaders supported by “opponents.” "Bolsheviks - from monarchists to "democrats". Bolshevism itself fell ill with the idea of a “world proletarian revolution”, was largely able to “digest” its ideological basis - the Marxist doctrine, and the government in Russia, recreated in a “revolutionary synthesis” in the form of the USSR, began to revive and develop the country based on own strength, to the broadest segments of the population and in their interests.
The results of the First World War and the conditions of post-war life established for the vanquished meant that there was not a lasting peace, but only some “respite”. This was obvious to all even competent politicians and analysts back in 1919. The national humiliation and ruin of Germany was fraught with the emergence of radical forces on the left and right sides of the political spectrum, the polarization of society, and the displacement of “centrists.” The left looked for a way out along the paths of the proletarian revolution, the right - along the paths of revanchism, which immediately manifested itself in the emergence of many radical nationalist groups. political organizations, most of whose activists were gradually absorbed by Hitler’s party, the NSDAP. The Great Depression, which hit the West in 1929, became a factor that radicalized German society, increasing its polarization, including the growing popularity of the Nazis, and at the same time frightening the bourgeois elite, who feared the coming to power of the left - the German communists. As a result, the National Socialists, led by Hitler, come to power, whose racist and expansionist doctrine suits both the German bourgeoisie and the leaders of “Western democracy” who dream of pitting a militarizing dictatorial Germany against communist Russia. Despite Hitler’s hatred of France, which humiliated Germany with the Treaty of Versailles, his main enemy is the USSR, and not only because communism is the ideological antipode of Nazism, but also because Russians, and indeed all Slavs in general, are considered by Nazi doctrine as an inferior race, and the territories inhabited by them - as a “living space” for the settlement of Aryans - the German nation. With the coming to power of Hitler, who proclaimed the task of creating the Third Reich and began the “revival of Germany” by persecuting any oppositionists and persecuting Jews, curtailing democracy and increased militarization, the rulers of the West, fearing the growing German power and at the same time trying to direct Nazi Germany to the East, pursued a policy of appeasement . But they miscalculated, and Austria, Czechoslovakia and Lithuania (Memel annexed) became victims of Hitler’s aggressive aspirations. Realizing the growing military threat from Germany, the USSR government persistently tried to create a system of collective security in Europe from 1935, but, not finding support from the “Western democracies” and trying to delay the inevitably approaching war, was forced to conclude the Treaty on August 23, 1939. non-aggression with Germany. England and France, playing a dishonest game, ended up outplaying themselves: Hitler attacked Poland on September 1, 1939, thereby marking the (official) beginning of a new world war. Moreover, the day before, England and France concluded a mutual assistance agreement with Poland, which forced Hitler to postpone for 5 days, but not abandon the attack on it. And despite the fact that real help The allies did not help the Poles, but waged a “strange war”, and a big war began. Thus, Germany started the war not in the East, as British and French politicians had hoped, but in the West. It was the great powers of Europe who raised Hitler, allowing him to annex the demilitarized Rhineland, Anschluss Austria, occupy Czechoslovakia, and attack Poland with impunity. And soon they themselves found themselves victims of German aggression.
During September, Poland was defeated (the USSR entered the territories of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus only on September 17, when Poland was actually defeated, and these territories could have been occupied by the Germans; thereby not only the related East Slavic peoples were reunited, but also the borders were pushed west USSR, improving its position in light of the inevitably impending war with Germany). The division of Poland involved Slovakia, part of whose lands had previously been annexed by Poland, and Lithuania, which received Vilnius. In April-May 1940, German troops occupied Norway, Denmark, Holland, Luxembourg and Belgium and broke through the front in France, which capitulated after occupying Paris in June. In the spring of 1941, Germany captured Greece and Yugoslavia, and on June 22 attacked the USSR.
The goal of this fascist German aggression was not simply to conquer and subjugate other states, but was fundamentally different. For the first time in modern history one of the powers laid claim to world domination. Not just coalitions of states, but social models and ideologies came together in mortal combat. For the first time, one of the states declared the racial superiority of its nation, setting the task of not simply conquering foreign lands, but also the destruction of entire peoples as “racially inferior” and the slavish subordination of the remaining inhabitants of the conquered countries.
The revanchism of Germany, which was defeated in the First World War, turned out to be clothed in the idea of “living space for the German nation,” which became not just one of the pillars of the ideology of German Nazism, but also a strategic position of a political force that set itself the goal of establishing a “new order,” build a hierarchy of states based on race, and turn the Germans into a “master race.” The crazy idea grew first into internal and then external political practice. With this idea, with the connivance of the “Western democracies,” Nazi Germany revived its military-industrial potential, tore up the Versailles Treaty without encountering opposition, and launched an expansion that grew into a real war, in which the Germans easily conquered almost all of Europe. The behind-the-scenes games of the “democratic West,” which sought to avert the threat from itself and direct Hitler’s aggression against the USSR, turned into a disaster for Czechoslovakia, Poland, Yugoslavia, France, and a number of other countries, with a direct threat of a German invasion of the British Isles.
For Germany and other countries of the fascist bloc, it was a war for world domination, a war not just of conquest, but a qualitatively new one in the history of mankind - a war for the reconstruction of the world under the slogan of the Nazi “new order” under the hegemony of the Third Reich. The essence of the Nazi goals, for the sake of which they started the world war, was clearly reflected in Hitler's Mein Kampf. Hitler’s Germany sought not just to conquer and subjugate a number of neighboring countries and peoples, which happened many times in both world and European history, but rather to conquer “living space” for the German nation, and, on the basis of racial doctrine, “purify “by means of total genocide from “non-Aryan”, according to Nazi ideologists, “racially inferior” peoples. And on the way to this Nazi “ideal” - to the enslavement and use for many decades, in fact, as slaves of “subhumans” - first of all, the Slavs. At the center of the post-war world of victorious Nazism was supposed to be Germany, the Third Reich, the German nation of masters, which was supposed to include the Germanized “Aryan elements” of a number of other peoples, and the rest, surviving after systematic direct extermination, were supposed to be evicted far beyond the Reich, to create conditions for them for a “natural” population reduction. But Hitler and a number of his henchmen were not happy with the state of the German nation, which, after the victory, was supposed to not only be cleared of “Jewish impurities” for the “purity of the race,” but also get rid of all “non-Aryan elements.” Moreover, Hitler, obsessed with mysticism, believed that the Germans of his time had lost their “energy potential,” and Nazi scientists conducted large-scale research and experiments to breed a new race — “supermen.” Thus, the Nazis had a not very clear, but monstrous and maniacally persistent strategy to remake humanity, in which their “new order” was only the initial stages. It is difficult to imagine what would have happened to Europe and its peoples (including the peoples of Germany’s satellite countries) in the event of Hitler’s victory in the World War, since in relation to many of them he expressed his contempt as non-Aryans who belonged to the lower classes. races, or “spoiled” (Italians, French, Romanians, etc., not to mention the Slavic ones), and they were needed while the war was going on. But even during the war, a gigantic machine for the systematic extermination of millions of people in concentration camps was created and worked properly, which was ground down by May 1945. more than 8 million lives. If Hitler's Germany won, and its resources were freed from solving military problems, the mechanism for the reconstruction of Europe (primarily based on the extermination of peoples, mass migrations, “cleansing” of territories for the Third Reich, degradation of peoples for the prosperity of the Reich) would work at full power.
During their time in power in Germany, the Nazis developed a number of plans regarding the post-war reconstruction of Europe, and although they were not officially approved, a significant part of their elements began to be implemented during the war. For the USSR, a plan “Ost” (General Plan East) was prepared (developed with German care!), dooming its peoples to extermination, and the remaining people to a gradual resettlement beyond the Urals, to annual extinction and reduction by several million people, to the liquidation of cities and culture , education, health care, hygiene, that is, the reduction of the Russian and most other peoples from the level of high modern civilization to a state of savagery for the purpose of slave exploitation by the “Aryan race”. In the event of victory, which the Nazi elite had no doubt about, it was planned to gradually Germanize the western regions of the USSR with their subsequent inclusion in the Reich, the borders of which were supposed to expand as the German and Germanized population increased. The Nazi doctrine in practice turned into a total war against the Soviet peoples, primarily against the Russians, a war to destroy not only military force, but to an even greater extent civilians(first of all, Jews and Gypsies were targeted for destruction, but in practice all Eastern Slavs - Belarusians, Ukrainians, Russians - were subjected to mass destruction; but if the concept of the Holocaust is “imprinted” into the modern world consciousness, then about the genocide of the Eastern Slavs carried out by Nazi Germany, why something is almost not mentioned not only in world historiography and media, but also in domestic ones).
To a large extent, similar to the German Nazi “concept”, the policy of “co-prosperity” of peoples was implemented by Hitler’s allies, the Japanese militarists, in Asia, building a hierarchy of puppet quasi-states subordinate to Japan through military expansion, and in the course of armed aggression, carrying out genocide of a number of peoples, primarily Chinese and Korean.
The war of the Anglo-American allies of the USSR against Nazi Germany was just, because Germany was the aggressor. However, this justice was very limited: it was a war of competitors for key geopolitical positions, in the struggle for world hegemony. The Anglo-Saxons sought to at least maintain their dominant position in the world, with Great Britain trying to prevent the collapse and division of its colonial empire, and the United States trying to overcome economic depression, get rid of huge debts and establish financial and economic dominance in the world. The defensive nature of the Anglo-Saxon war was very relative. Firstly, pursuing the traditional policy of “divide and rule”, the policy of pitting the most powerful continental powers in Europe against each other, in the new historical conditions of the interwar period, the Anglo-Saxons actively contributed to the establishment of the Nazi dictatorship in Germany and militarism in Japan, tried to solve their own problems by cultivating and bringing to power in Germany radical revanchist forces led by Hitler, in order to further direct his aggression to the East, against the USSR - not only a growing geopolitical rival, but also an ideological adversary. Thus, the Western “democracies” not only wanted to avert the blow, but also to pit “two totalitarian regimes” against each other, so that they would weaken and destroy in battle, and their people (as some politicians were frank) would kill each other as much as possible. Secondly, even when the danger of German Nazism (especially in alliance with Italian fascism and other pro-fascist regimes in Europe and Japanese militarism in Asia) for the “Western democracies” was already becoming obvious, neither England, nor France, nor the USA stopped the assertion of revanchist forces in Germany and militaristic in Japan, when this was not at all difficult to do. Moreover, it was precisely the policy of connivance with aggressors that became the most important factor which led to the outbreak of World War II. Thirdly, with all the severity, risks and victims of the Second World War, for Great Britain and the USA it was mainly a war of armed forces against the military force of the enemy - the countries of the German-Japanese bloc. They conducted military operations on foreign territory, and no enemy soldier set foot on the British Isles (although they were bombed by German aircraft), and not a single enemy bomb fell on the continental United States of America (the most dramatic episode was the Japanese attack on the military naval base Pearl Harbor). The “price” of waging war, the sacrifices made during it for the “Western democracies” were incomparably small compared to the sacrifices of other objects fascist aggression(USSR, China, Poland, Yugoslavia, etc.), and countries - the main opponents (Germany, Japan). The combined military casualties of the United States and Great Britain - less than half a million people, mostly military rather than civilians, seem negligible in comparison with 27 million Soviet and about 20 million Chinese losses - those countries that, unlike the Anglo-Saxons, were in no way involved in the outbreak new world carnage.
Our country was not yet ready for such a war, because we had to fight not against Germany alone, but actually against all of Europe. Trying to delay a direct confrontation with a powerful enemy, without finding understanding among the Western democracies that were playing their game, the Soviet leadership in the late 1930s. was forced to make temporary agreements with Germany. Thanks to this, it was possible to return part of the territories of the former Russian Empire, which otherwise, like Poland, would have been occupied by the Wehrmacht. By moving its borders to the west, the USSR significantly improved its military-strategic position, which played a significant positive role in the most difficult initial period of the war and allowed it to gain time.
But it was not possible to avoid the Nazi attack. Hitler, who underestimated neither the mobilization potential of the USSR nor the moral spirit of the Soviet people, who relied on the blitzkrieg, inciting interethnic, political, and social contradictions, began a bloody adventure that ultimately led not only to the collapse of the Nazi regime, but also to the national catastrophe of Germany. Without a declaration of war, German armed forces invaded Soviet territory. The previously invincible German military machine, overcoming the stubborn resistance of Soviet troops, moved east.
The Soviet Union was one of the main participants in the Second World War, and therefore its general parameters were also characteristic of it. However, the war waged by the USSR was fundamentally different in its essence and character from the war waged by other countries participating in the Second World War, even by its allies in anti-Hitler coalition. The stakes in that war for Western countries were qualitatively different than for the Slavic peoples and even more so for the peoples of the USSR: for the German racists, the Anglo-Saxons were still “theirs,” and even in case of defeat they only risked the loss of dominance in the world and the loss of the “Western democracy” (more of a propaganda decoration than a social reality), but not the right to life.
For the USSR the situation was fundamentally different. The Soviet leadership was clearly aware of this and expressed it to I.V. Stalin in his speech on July 3, 1941: “The matter is... about the life and death of the Soviet state, about the life and death of the peoples of the USSR, about whether the peoples of the Soviet Union should be free or fall into enslavement” (1). It was no coincidence that his participation in the World War received the name and entered into the historical consciousness of our compatriots as the Great Patriotic War, which, of course, cannot be considered in isolation from the Second World War: the Patriotic War became a natural consequence of the incitement and unfolding of the world conflict, subjugation by Nazi Germany (by means of ideological and diplomatic expansion, and then by direct military force) throughout almost all of Western, Northern, Southern and Central Europe. Then Hitler attacked the USSR, and not just a defensive war of the Soviet people against another aggressor began (of which there were many in the history of our country), but a life-and-death struggle of Russian civilization against the invasion of the forces of almost all of Europe. The question was stark - who will win, and if for Germany defeat threatened only a change in the regime of power, Nazi (and racist) ideology, the loss of some territories and reparations that would not compensate for even a small part of the damage caused, for the Anglo-Saxons - the loss of world hegemony and “democratic values” when being integrated into the Nazi “new world order” on quite privileged terms (as their own, “Aryan” peoples, especially since racism arose in the depths of the English colonial culture, which glorified the “white man’s burden”, and the German Nazis were just students of social -Darwinists and eugenicists), then for the USSR defeat threatened the loss of a thousand years of Russian statehood, genocide of a number of peoples, enslavement in the literal sense of the word, and the reduction of the rest of the population to the state of “subhumans.”
In addition to the fate of the war that had begun, in which the question of “to be or not to be” was decided not only for the Soviet state, but also for its peoples, the leaders of the Soviet Union immediately understood its nationwide and domestic character. Already on June 22, who gave a speech on behalf of the Soviet leadership, People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs V.M. Molotov drew parallels with the liberation Patriotic War of 1812, emphasized the justice of the war on the Soviet side and confidence in the victory of the USSR, saying: “The Red Army and all our people will again lead a victorious patriotic war for the Motherland, for honor, for freedom. Our cause is just. The enemy will be defeated. Victory will be ours” (2). July 3, 1941 in an address by I.V. Stalin to the Soviet people called this war not ordinary, but great, after which its official name “Great Patriotic War” was established: “The war with Nazi Germany cannot be considered an ordinary war. It is not only a war between two armies. At the same time, it is a great war of the entire Soviet people against the Nazi troops" (3)
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It was a war of a country - a victim of aggression from almost all the countries of Europe, either united by Nazi Germany or already conquered by it. It was here, in the East of Europe, that the Nazis were looking for “living space for the German nation,” and only the USSR - both in its potential and in its determination to fight to the death - in 1941 represented the only real obstacle to Hitler’s path to world domination. Insular Great Britain, although it could not be immediately occupied by the Wehrmacht, no longer posed a serious threat to the Third Reich, and the United States overseas was busy with the war with militaristic Japan. And the outcome of the world war was decided in the confrontation between the USSR and the Third Reich, which became fatal for the aggressors: it was the Eastern Front that was the main theater of military operations for Nazi Germany and its satellites, where ¾ of their divisions and military-economic potential were ground up. Of the ten German soldiers killed, eight were destroyed on the Soviet-German front. Finally, it was the victorious completion of the Great Patriotic War with the fulfillment of the Red Army's Liberation Mission in Europe that put an end to the war on the European continent and predetermined the early conclusion of the Second World War in the Far East against militaristic Japan. That is, the contribution of the USSR to the Victory over the forces of the brown plague was certainly decisive.
Not only for the USSR, as the historical state form of Russian civilization, but also for the Russian people and other peoples who entered its civilizational orbit, the Great Patriotic War was a fateful war, on the outcome of which their freedom and very existence depended, a just war - defensive and liberating . Therefore, it is quite legitimate to talk about the Liberation Mission of the Red Army not only from the moment when it entered the territories of other countries in 1944, but also from the very beginning of the war - from the moment of the treacherous attack of the enemy on June 22, 1941, because the Soviet people had to first to free ourselves from aggression and occupation by an enemy superior in military potential, preparedness, organized military force and military art. But from the very first days the USSR’s struggle for its freedom was connected with helping other peoples in their liberation from Nazi enslavement. On June 22, in the already quoted speech by V.M. Molotov spoke of a clique of “bloodthirsty fascist rulers of Germany who enslaved the French, Czechs, Poles, Serbs, Norway, Belgium, Denmark, Holland, Greece and other peoples” (4), which imposed war by attacking the USSR. And on July 3, 1941, in his speech, Stalin for the first time made a connection between the Patriotic War of the Soviet people for the liberation of their country with the help of other peoples who became victims of German aggression: “The purpose of this nationwide Patriotic War against the fascist oppressors is not only the elimination of the danger hanging over our country , but also help to all the peoples of Europe groaning under the yoke of German fascism. ... In this great war we will have faithful allies in the people of Europe and America. Our war for the freedom of our Fatherland will merge with the struggle of the peoples of Europe and America for their independence, for democratic freedoms. It will be a united front of peoples standing for freedom, against enslavement and the threat of enslavement from Hitler’s fascist armies" (5)
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But victory was still very far away, the path to it was long and difficult. The beginning of the war revealed considerable problems and miscalculations in the USSR's preparations for war: in providing troops with weapons and military equipment, in strategic planning, in command and control. Having received the resources of European countries and the combat experience of European campaigns, the Wehrmacht seized the strategic initiative and, despite major defeats (in the Battle of Moscow, the Battle of Stalingrad, etc.), owned it until 1943. Hitler, who believed in an early victory and had no doubt that Russia would be broken, miscalculated: neither the treacherous surprise of the attack, nor the temporary military-technical and organizational superiority, nor the criminal barbaric cruelty of the Nazis helped them. Despite everything, the Soviet people survived.
But ahead - from the moment of the fascist attack until the Victory - there were almost four long years of difficult confrontation with a powerful, unprecedentedly cruel, merciless enemy, which required the exertion of all forces to grind countless fascist divisions in bloody battles and battles. The war, unprecedented in history, just, defensive and liberating for the Soviet people, against the hordes of Nazi Germany and its satellites lasted 1418 days and nights. It will forever remain for our compatriots the Great Patriotic War, every day of which was filled with the inhumanity and extreme cruelty of the enemy, the unprecedented scale of destruction on our land, the pain of irreparable losses, the unparalleled courage and mass heroism of Soviet soldiers at the front and the dedication of home front workers. On March 27, 1944, for the first time in one of the sectors, Soviet troops reached the state border of the USSR, crossed the Prut River and entered foreign, Romanian territory, but only by mid-1944 were they able to finally clear all their lands from the occupiers. The liberation mission of the Red Army on its own Soviet soil was carried out, but this was only its first part, the most important for the peoples of the USSR, but not the only one necessary to end the war.
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Having experienced the bitterness of retreats and defeats at the beginning of the war, having been crushed in defensive and offensive battles by hundreds of Wehrmacht divisions and satellite armies of the Third Reich, and without waiting for the opening of the Second Front in the most difficult periods for itself, the Red Army, having liberated its temporarily occupied territory, reached the western borders with other states to begin a military campaign across the countries of Europe and then finish off the fascist beast in its lair, in Germany.The second part of the great Liberation mission of the Red Army began - the liberation of Europe.
Today, sometimes even domestic historians pose a question that at the end of World War II was unthinkable for our compatriots and, in principle, could not be asked by our allies: did the Red Army need to cross the state border of the USSR and go to Europe?
However, to achieve victory it was necessary to completely destroy the enemy’s armed forces, withdraw Germany’s allies from the war, liberate Nazi-occupied Europe and occupy the territory of the main enemy - the Third Reich, achieving its unconditional surrender. Without the complete and final destruction of the military power of Nazi Germany and its satellites, there could be no victory: the enemy still had enormous military-economic and mobilization potential; he could regroup his forces and then continue the war against the USSR. We must not forget about the race in the military-technical sphere: the German Nazis accelerated the development of both the latest “conventional” weapons (airplanes, tanks, etc.) and “miracle weapons” - primarily missile and nuclear weapons, achieving impressive successes . Therefore, time could work in Germany’s favor against the USSR. No less important was the problem of the USSR’s allies, who were very unreliable: intelligence reported to the Soviet leadership that Western “partners” were attempting secret contacts with representatives of the highest circles of the Reich, who were ready to conclude a separate peace with the West, including under the condition of eliminating Hitler. In particular, the attempted coup in Germany undertaken by its elite in 1944 (Staufenberg’s attempt on Hitler’s life with the participation of a significant part of the generals, the leadership of the Abwehr, etc. in the conspiracy) if successful, threatened the Soviet side with the implementation of a scenario in which Germany without Hitler could unite against the USSR with the “Western democracies”. But even without such an extreme option, influential circles among the allies sought to return the geopolitical situation (the borders of the USSR and the spread of its influence in Europe) to the state of 1939, or, as a last resort, 1941.
Stalin and the Soviet leadership, on the contrary, proceeded from historical experience (aggression in recent centuries has always come from the West). The USSR sought to secure its western borders and rid the country of war for at least half a century, which could be done provided there was a belt of friendly or at least neutral states. In any case, there is no “power vacuum” in politics, and if Soviet troops had not entered Eastern and Central Europe, the British and Americans would have done so. Soviet diplomacy at the highest level had to make enormous efforts to agree with the United States and Great Britain on the division of spheres of influence so that the Eastern European countries would be in the zone of Soviet control. Accordingly, these countries became objects of liberation operations of the Red Army. But even after these agreements in Tehran and Yalta, the Western allies tried to intrigue, pushing their scenario of ousting the USSR from Eastern Europe through attempts to restore the pre-war regimes (provocations with the unprepared and doomed to defeat Warsaw and Slovak uprisings at the command of the emigrant governments of Poland and Czechoslovakia, attempts to introduce their own troops to Bulgaria, etc.). At the same time, the “democratic West” saved the lives of its citizens (including by delaying the opening of the Second Front), preferring to pay for the crushing of Nazism with the lives of Soviet soldiers, but wanted to keep the fruits of victories for themselves. However, at the end of the war, the Reich leadership concentrated enormous manpower and equipment in Germany itself and surrounding countries (Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia): the front narrowed and the density of weapons, manpower and military equipment(artillery, tanks, airplanes) per kilometer of front increased several times. Therefore, even after the landing of troops in Normandy and their advance towards Germany, the allies understood that without the Red Army, the cost of defeating the enemy would be prohibitive, if, in principle, victory was possible.
Thus, the reasons for the liberation campaign of the Red Army in Europe are quite obvious, and the main one among them is the need for the complete and final defeat and destruction of the enemy’s armed forces with the occupation of his own territory (this is the ABC of military theory and world historical military practice). And on the way to this goal there were both states - satellites of the Nazis (Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Austria, etc.), which needed to be withdrawn from the war, and the countries occupied by them (Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, etc.), and in In all these countries there were significant or huge contingents of German troops present, as the Germans tried to defend Germany on the distant approaches to its territory. Thus, German troops offered the most fierce resistance on the territory of Hungary (together with Hungarian troops), and battles with German units that did not surrender in Czechoslovakia continued for a long time, even after the official surrender, until May 12-13.
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1. Truth. 1941. July 3.
2. News. 1941. June 24. No. 147 (7523)
3. Truth. 1941. July 3.
4. News. 1941. June 24. No. 147 (7523)
5. Truth. 1941. July 3.
Surrender of Germany
The offensive, launched in the winter of 1944 near Leningrad and Novgorod, continued continuously. The Red Army gave no respite to the enemy. From the end of December 1943 to mid-May 1944, our troops marched to the west over 1,000 km, defeated 99 enemy divisions and 2 brigades (of which 22 divisions and 1 brigade were destroyed). To Right Bank Ukraine - the main direction of the offensive - the Nazi command transferred 43 divisions and 4 brigades, of which 34 divisions and all brigades were from European countries and from Germany itself.
In the spring of 1944, Soviet troops reached the southwestern border of the USSR and transferred hostilities to the territory of Romania. The troops of generals F.I. Tolbukhin and A.I. Eremenko, together with the forces of the Black Sea Fleet and the Azov military flotilla under the command of admirals F.S. Oktyabrsky and S.G. Gorshkov, liberated Crimea.
By this time, the Allies had prepared the landing of their troops in northern France. Operation Overlord is the largest strategic landing in history; a huge expeditionary force of 2 million 876 thousand people took part in it. Simultaneously with the Allied offensive in the west, in the summer of 1944, the largest offensive operations of the Red Army were launched. On June 10, the liberation of Karelia began, which led the Finnish government to the decision to withdraw from the war. Then came the main blow in Belarus and Western Ukraine.
The Belarusian operation (“Bagration”) is one of the largest in World War II. The offensive began suddenly for the enemy, who was waiting for him in the south. On June 23, after powerful air strikes and active actions of Belarusian partisans, Soviet troops penetrated the enemy’s defenses. Tank and mechanized groups rushed into the gaps formed. On July 3, Minsk was liberated, to the east of which 105 thousand German soldiers and officers remained encircled. In other “cauldrons” near Vitebsk and Bobruisk, another 30 thousand and 40 thousand, respectively, are surrounded.
Soviet troops developed a rapid offensive and reached the border of East Prussia to the Grodno-Bialystok line, and in the south to Brest. During the offensive in Belarus, the Lvov-Sandomierz operation began to liberate Western Ukraine.
The grandiose offensive of the Red Army strengthened the public demand in the United States and England to intensify actions in France. But the Allied offensive from the Normandy bridgehead began only on July 25, 5 days after the failed assassination attempt on Hitler. German troops tried to launch a counterattack, but were unsuccessful, and began to retreat. On August 15, the Allied landing also landed in the south of France, after which the Germans began an organized retreat along the entire Western Front. By August 25, the Allies captured the territory of France between the Seine and Loire. Throughout the country, Resistance fighters entered into battle with the occupiers. The armed struggle of the French people significantly helped the offensive of the Allied forces. The central element of the struggle was the successful Parisian armed uprising, led by the Communists.
The joint offensive of the anti-Hitler coalition troops accelerated the collapse of the Hitler bloc and intensified the struggle of anti-fascist forces in the countries of Eastern, Central and Southern Europe. In the countries occupied by Nazi Germany and the states allied with it, a sharp polarization of forces occurred during the war. The victories of the Soviet Union made socialism popular among the broad masses and strengthened the influence of communist parties. The entry of Soviet troops into the countries of Eastern and Central Europe revolutionized the liberation movement and provided support to socialist-oriented political forces.
In the countries of Eastern, Southern and Central Europe, the process of defeating Hitler's troops by the armed forces of the Soviet Union merged with liberating anti-fascist people's democratic uprisings and revolutions.
During the Iasi-Chisinau operation to liberate Moldova, an anti-fascist uprising began in Bucharest on August 23, under the leadership of the Communist Party of Romania and in agreement with the Romanian king. By August 29, the encircled enemy troops were defeated, and 208.6 thousand people were captured. By August 31, Soviet soldiers, together with Romanian formations and work detachments, liberated Ploesti, and then entered Bucharest, enthusiastically greeted by the residents.
During the liberation of Romania, Soviet troops reached the borders of Bulgaria, where by the summer of 1944 a communist-led guerrilla war had begun against the monarcho-fascist government, which had drawn Bulgaria into a bloc with Germany and provided its territory and resources for the fight against the USSR. In 1944, Bulgaria continued to actively help Germany. The new government of Bulgaria, formed on September 2, 1944, declared neutrality, but still left its territory at the disposal of the German fascists.
The advance of Soviet troops in Bulgaria dramatically changed the entire situation in southern Europe. Yugoslav partisans received direct assistance from the Red Army. In accordance with the agreement between the government of the USSR and the leadership of the liberation movement of Yugoslavia, Soviet troops, together with Yugoslav and Bulgarian units, carried out the Belgrade operation. Having defeated the German army group, they liberated Belgrade. The Yugoslav People's Army received a strong rear and military assistance for further struggle for the complete liberation of the country. In Albania, by the end of November, German troops were driven out by popular resistance forces, and a Provisional Democratic Government was formed there as well.
Simultaneously with the offensive in the Balkans, the Red Army advanced into the Eastern Carpathians to help the Slovak partisans and the borders of Hungary. Overcoming fierce enemy resistance, Soviet soldiers liberated a third of Hungarian territory by the end of October and launched an attack on Budapest. The Anti-Fascist Front of Hungary created the Insurgent Liberation Committee, which included several political parties led by the communist one. The liberated territory became the basis for the creation of people's power and the development of the people's democratic revolution in the country. In December, the Provisional National Assembly formed the Provisional Government, which declared war on Germany and began to reorganize the political and economic life of the country on a democratic basis.
In October, troops of the Karelian Front (General K. A. Meretskov) together with the forces of the Northern Fleet (Admiral A. G. Golovko) liberated the Soviet Arctic and part of Northern Norway. In the fire of the war against fascism, the foundations of the military commonwealth of the armed forces of the USSR and the new people's republics were formed. Particularly heavy fighting took place in Hungary during the Budapest operation, which began on October 29 and lasted until February 13, 1945 by the forces of the 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian Fronts, the Danube Flotilla with the involvement of the 1st Bulgarian Army and the 3rd Yugoslav Army. A bloody defensive battle took place in the area of Lake Balaton, where Soviet troops steadfastly withstood a powerful enemy tank attack.
On January 17, Warsaw was liberated, on January 19 - Lodz and Krakow, which the Nazis mined during the retreat, but Soviet intelligence officers managed to save the city. By the end of January - beginning of February, troops of the 1st Belorussian (Marshal Zhukov) and 1st Ukrainian (Marshal Konev) fronts reached the Oder, capturing large bridgeheads on its western bank. Troops of the 2nd and 3rd Belorussian Fronts (Marshals Rokossovsky and Vasilevsky) together with the Red Banner Baltic Fleet (Admiral V.F. Tribune) led an offensive in East Prussia and Pomerania. In the south, Soviet troops advanced into Czechoslovakia and began the liberation of Budapest.
As a result of the offensive of the Soviet troops in the winter of 1945, Hitler’s army suffered a crushing defeat, and the imminent end of the war became a fact. On April 16, the Berlin War began strategic operation. Soviet troops broke through the enemy's deeply layered defenses and entered the suburbs of Berlin. On April 25, the encirclement of the Berlin group was completed. Along the entire Western and Italian fronts, the Allies accepted the partial surrender of Nazi troops (bypassing the signing of the act of unconditional surrender of Germany), quickly advancing through German territory. At the insistence of the Soviet government, on May 8, all allies signed the act of unconditional surrender of Germany. It was held in liberated Berlin under the chairmanship of Marshal of the Soviet Union G.K. Zhukov. Only after the signing of the act did German troops in the east begin to lay down their arms everywhere. The last day of the war became the day of liberation of the fraternal Czechoslovak people. The Red Army fully fulfilled its international duty as a liberating army
What was the great liberation mission of the Soviet Union towards the peoples of Europe and Asia during the war?
Fighting against the Nazi invaders, the Soviet people and their Armed Forces defended not only their socialist Motherland, but also world civilization, the right of all peoples to independent state existence, and a free choice of the paths of their social development.
On the Soviet-German front, from the first days of the war, one fascist division after another was ground down, which continuously and very sensitively weakened the German military machine, created more favorable conditions for all the anti-fascist forces of the enslaved countries of Europe for the development of their liberation struggle for their national independence and social progress .
The liberation goals of the USSR in the war, proclaimed at the very beginning, formed the basis of the Soviet program for the organization and reconstruction of the state, economic and cultural life of the European peoples, which was put forward in November 1943. It provided for: 1) the liberation of the peoples of Europe from fascist invaders and assisting them in rebuilding their national states, which should once again become free and independent; 2) granting the liberated peoples full right and freedom to decide for themselves the issue of their state structure; 3) severe punishment of fascist criminals and perpetrators of war for all the atrocities they committed; 4) the establishment of an order in Europe that would completely exclude the possibility of new aggression on the part of Germany; 5) ensuring long-term economic, political and cultural cooperation of the peoples of Europe, based on mutual trust and mutual assistance.
This program became the content of the political course of the Soviet state in relation to all European countries liberated by Soviet troops. In each of them, the power of national administrative bodies at the center and locally was established in the liberated territory. This created real opportunities for these countries to independently choose the path of their further development.
Constantly supporting democratic forces in all liberated countries without exception, the USSR assisted them in eradicating the remnants of fascism. The imperialists of the USA and England in every possible way prevented the strengthening of democratic orders in the countries liberated from fascism and supported reactionary elements in the emigrant governments of Poland, Yugoslavia, Greece, reactionaries in Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary, hoping to establish them in power.
The liberation mission of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War found its most complete expression in the fact that its heroic army ensured deliverance from the fascist yoke of the peoples of Austria, Bulgaria, Hungary, Denmark, Norway, Poland, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, as well as in the liberation of the German people from bloody fascist dictatorship. Northeast China (Manchuria) and Korea also gained liberation thanks to the decisive role of the USSR in the defeat of imperialist Japan. In total, about 7 million Soviet soldiers and officers took part in the liberation of the countries of Central and South-Eastern Europe, and more than 1.5 million Soviet soldiers took part in the liberation of Manchuria and Korea. Outside the USSR, Soviet troops lost only over 1 million soldiers and officers killed. For the liberation of Poland from the fascist yoke, 600 thousand Soviet soldiers gave their lives, Czechoslovakia - 140 thousand, Hungary - over 140 thousand, Romania - 69 thousand, East Germany - 102 thousand, Austria - 26 thousand, etc. Their mass graves on the territory of 12 countries of Europe and Asia serve and will continue to serve as a constant reminder to the people of these countries of the noble feat of the Soviet liberator warrior, accomplished in the name of the happiness and freedom of the peoples. The Armed Forces of the USSR played a decisive role in the liberation of those European countries occupied by the Nazis, whose territory Soviet soldiers did not set foot on. General Charles de Gaulle, who headed the French Committee for National Liberation during the war and then the Provisional Government of the country, stated: “The French know... that it was Soviet Russia that played the main role in their liberation...”
The liberation mission of the Soviet Union in Europe and Asia created the most favorable external conditions for the peoples of the countries liberated by Soviet troops for their victory over the forces of reaction and the triumph of people's democratic and socialist revolutions. The presence of Soviet troops in these countries thwarted the plans of internal reactionary forces to start civil wars, and the imperialist reaction to carry out military intervention in order to suppress the revolutionary movement of the working people led by the working class and its communist vanguard.
The world-historical significance of the liberation mission of the USSR and its Armed Forces in the Great Patriotic War is truly invaluable. All progressive humanity noted this as a factor of enormous revolutionary influence on the entire course of international life. The first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, Gustav Husak, at the International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties in Moscow in 1969, spoke on this matter: “Whoever survived the Second World War and took part in the anti-fascist struggle will never forget the exceptional role of the Soviet Union in the battle for freedom peoples, about his sacrifices, about the heroism of his people and army. He will not forget that this struggle and the sacrifices of the Soviet Union made it possible for many peoples to regain their national freedom and state independence, and also to begin the struggle for the victory of the working class, for the path to socialism.”
The grossest slander of Soviet policy towards the liberated countries is the assertion of W. Churchill and some bourgeois historians that the USSR liberated Europe only to establish “Soviet despotism.” The blasphemy of Churchill, who used the word “despotism” in relation to the USSR’s policy towards other countries, expresses his class hatred of our country, whose existence and influential policies he did not want to put up with all his life. By the way, he, as the Prime Minister of Great Britain during the war, was well aware that the USSR and its army did not interfere in the internal affairs of the liberated countries and did not impose Soviet orders on them.
W. Churchill is not alone in slandering the liberation mission of the USSR. The American historian K. Howe, ignoring the real facts, also claims that the Red Army, during the liberation of Eastern Europe, did everything to “establish Soviet power” there. The French author F. Missof and some other lovers of fiction about the “intrigues of the Kremlin” resort to the same falsifications.
The export of revolution is alien to our country. During the war years, it only prevented the export of counter-revolution to the liberated countries, which the US and British imperialists sought to achieve.
MILITARY THOUGHT No. 2/1985, pp. 3-16
Marshal of the Soviet UnionV. G. KULIKOV ,
First, Deputy Minister of Defense of the USSR-
Commander-in-Chief of the United Armed Forces
states- participants of the Warsaw Pact,
Hero of the Soviet Union
The SOVIET people and their Armed Forces, under the leadership of the Communist Party, made a decisive contribution to the victory over fascist Germany and its allies, to the liberation of the peoples of Europe from fascist slavery, to the salvation of world civilization, and honorably fulfilled their patriotic and international duty. This is their greatest service to humanity, as emphasized in the resolution of the CPSU Central Committee “On the 40th anniversary of the Victory of the Soviet people in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945.”
The liberation mission of the Soviet Armed Forces in World War II is a vivid example of proletarian internationalism in action. This world-historical feat is an inexhaustible source of further strengthening the indestructible union of the peoples and armies of the fraternal countries of socialism, all the forces of peace and social progress in their struggle against the instigators of a new world war.
Sixty-seven years have passed since the birth of the first army of a new type - the Soviet Armed Forces. They walked a glorious military path, showing unparalleled examples of mass heroism, selfless service to their people, the cause of the Leninist party and devotion to the great ideas of proletarian solidarity. During the harsh years of the civil war and foreign military intervention, our army fulfilled its international duty with honor, for, “while maintaining Soviet power,” wrote V.I. Lenin, “we provide the best, strongest support to the proletariat of all countries in its incredibly difficult, difficult struggle against their bourgeoisie” (Poln. sobr. soch., vol. 35, p. 392).
In the pre-war years, the Soviet Union provided selfless fraternal assistance to the peoples of Abyssinia, Spain, China and Mongolia in their struggle against fascism and Japanese militarism for their national and social liberation. In the 30s, in the context of the impending Second World War, workers of foreign countries, all progressive people of the planet rightly saw in him their reliable friend, that real force that could rally around itself all the democratic forces of the world, stop the war machine of Hitler Germany and put an end to fascism . And they were right. During the years of the last war, when many states lost their independence, and the threat of physical destruction or enslavement loomed over millions of people, the Soviet people and their soldiers rallied closely around Lenin’s party, stood as an insurmountable wall in the way of the powerful military machine of Nazi Germany, exhausted and bled them dry in fierce battles. enemy, made a decisive contribution to the defeat of Nazi Germany and its satellites. The chronicle of the Great Patriotic War indisputably testifies to the invincibility of socialism, about it; enormous vitality.
Bourgeois falsifiers of history are trying to hide or belittle the true significance of the enormous military and material assistance of the USSR to the enslaved peoples of Europe and Asia in their liberation from the yoke of fascism and Japanese militarism. Attempts to pervert the lofty goals of the liberation mission do not stop. Soviet Army. But the efforts of the ideologists of imperialism to belittle the truly humane, world-historical significance of the victory of the Armed Forces of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War and the noble exploits of the Soviet liberator soldiers are in vain.
It is known that before the treacherous attack of Nazi Germany on the Soviet Union, not a single bourgeois state was able to withstand the blows of Hitler's military machine. The aggressor captured many European countries one after another: Poland, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, France and a number of Balkan states.
French troops resisted for only 40 days. The English expeditionary army suffered a major defeat, the remnants of which, abandoning their weapons on the battlefield, were evacuated to the British Isles.
In the occupied countries, the Nazi invaders established a brutal terrorist regime. They robbed and killed people. The history of mankind has never known such mass destruction of civilians, the forced abduction of millions of people into slavery. The ominous death camps with which the Nazis surrounded the whole of Europe will forever remain in the memory of peoples as symbols of fascist obscurantism and barbarism.
The enslaved peoples rose up in a sacred struggle against the occupiers, but the forces were too unequal. With bated breath, they watched with hope the progress of the fierce battles that unfolded on the Soviet-German front, and knew for sure that the task of defeating fascism, liberating millions of people from slavery, and saving world civilization was within the power of only the Soviet Union.
All the freedom-loving peoples of the world rallied around the USSR, which became the center of the international anti-fascist movement. The Soviet Union clearly formulated its tasks in relation to the peoples subjected to aggression by Nazi Germany. Speaking on the radio on July 3, 1941, Chairman of the State Defense Committee of the USSR I.V. Stalin stated that the goal of the nationwide Patriotic War against the fascist oppressors “is not only to eliminate the danger hanging over our country, but also to help all the peoples of Europe groaning under the yoke German fascism."
The government of the USSR proclaimed to the whole world that the Soviet people and their Armed Forces would wage an uncompromising struggle for the destruction of the Hitler regime and the restoration of democratic freedoms, the elimination of racial exclusivity, ensuring full equality of all nations and the inviolability of their territories, the liberation of enslaved peoples and the restoration of their sovereign rights, granting the full right to each nation to decide for itself the issue of its state structure, providing economic assistance to war-ravaged countries.
This program of the Soviet Union, which clearly expressed the liberating nature of the Great Patriotic War, received recognition and support from the peoples of the whole world.
In the great liberation mission of the Soviet Army during the war, two stages can be distinguished: the first - from the entry of the Soviet state into the war until the spring of 1944, that is, until the entry of Soviet troops to the state border of the USSR; the second - with the beginning of their direct actions to liberate foreign countries from the fascist yoke and until the end of the Second World War.
At the first stage the activities of the Soviet Armed Forces were carried out in the following areas: the defeat of the main forces of Nazi Germany and its allies on the Soviet-German front, the creation of favorable external conditions for the development of the anti-fascist Resistance movement in occupied and Nazi-dependent countries; providing the peoples of the enslaved states with all possible military and material assistance; training of national personnel for the partisan anti-fascist movement in foreign countries; formation of foreign military units and formations on the territory of the USSR.
At the second stage after the defeat of the Wehrmacht on our soil and the exit of the Soviet Army to the western borders of the USSR, the time came when every Soviet warrior from soldier to marshal was ready to give all his strength and knowledge, and, if necessary, his life to fulfill the new order of the Motherland to liberate the enslaved peoples and the final defeat of the Nazi troops.
The greatness of the feat of the Soviet people and their army lies, first of all, in the fact that they stopped the fascist aggressors, destroyed their main military force and defended the world's first socialist state - the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Because of this, the military aspect of the liberation mission became the main factor in ensuring the achievement of the final goal of the war. Only the complete defeat of the aggressor could bring freedom and independence to the peoples of the occupied countries.
The path to victory over fascism and liberation from its yoke of the peoples of Europe was not easy. At first, the Soviet Armed Forces, in heavy defensive battles, exhausted and stopped the aggressor and inflicted significant damage on him. The whole world learned that in the battle of Moscow, Hitler’s strategic concept of “lightning war” collapsed and the myth of the invincibility of the fascist army was dispelled. This accelerated the formation and consolidation of the anti-Hitler coalition, to the unity and strengthening of which the Soviet Union made a decisive contribution." It was the USSR that put forward its specific program, in which the allies’ indispensable obligation was to conduct a joint struggle for the freedom and independence of the enslaved peoples.
The crushing blows to the enemy inflicted by our troops at Stalingrad and on the Kursk Bulge, in the North Caucasus and in the Battle of the Dnieper completed a radical turning point in the Great Patriotic War and the entire Second World War as a whole in favor of the anti-Hitler coalition. The Soviet Army came to this period of the war as a formidable, powerful force, as bright personification the power of the socialist state, as an army-liberator of enslaved peoples. The military skill and morale of the Soviet troops increased immeasurably. Lenin's prophetic words came true O that “the awareness of the masses of the goals and causes of the war is of enormous importance and ensures victory” (Poln. sobr. soch., vol. 41, p. 121). All this created decisive preconditions for the Soviet people and their army to carry out their liberation mission.
The year 1944 was marked by new brilliant victories of the Soviet Armed Forces. The enemy was defeated near Leningrad, in Right Bank Ukraine and Crimea, Belarus, near Iasi and Chisinau, in the Baltic states and the Soviet Arctic. As a result of the rapid offensive of our troops in 1944, the entire Soviet land was cleared of the Nazi invaders.
For 1080 days and nights - from the beginning of the Great Patriotic War until the opening of a second front in Europe by the allies in the anti-Hitler coalition - the Soviet people, essentially alone, waged a titanic struggle against the main forces of Nazi Germany and its satellites. By grinding down the most combat-ready fascist divisions, the Soviet Army deprived the enemy of the main forces and means of waging war, and also forced his command to withdraw troops from other fronts, from occupied states and send them to the East. From 1941 to 1944, it transferred 212 divisions from Western European countries to the Soviet-German front.
All this made it much easier fighting American-British associations and allowed them to repel the offensive of Italian-German troops in North Africa, to carry out the landing of expeditionary forces in Western Europe, the development of hostilities in France and avoid a serious defeat when repelling the Wehrmacht offensive in the Ardennes.
By transferring the most combat-ready divisions to the Soviet-German front, the Nazis were forced to weaken their garrisons in the occupied countries, which contributed to the deployment of armed struggle by the Resistance forces on a large scale, especially in France, Belgium, Yugoslavia and Greece. “Where the German regiment was previously located,” noted M. Thorez, “a battalion or company was left; where the company was quartered; there is no one left except the Nazi patrols that appear from time to time.”
The peoples and armies of the USA, Great Britain, France, China and other states of the anti-Hitler coalition made an undoubted contribution to achieving victory in the Second World War. However, it was the Soviet Union that bore the brunt of the war on its shoulders and played a decisive role in the defeat of the main forces of the armies of Nazi Germany and militaristic Japan. From June 1941 to mid-1944, 92-95 percent operated on the Soviet-German front. ground forces of Nazi Germany and its satellites, or 15-20 times more than on other fronts where US and British troops were located. Even after the landing of the American-British expeditionary forces in Northern France, the main group of German ground forces (comprising from 74 to 65 percent) continued to operate on the Soviet-German front and outnumbered those forces that opposed the American forces by 1.8-2.8 times. British and French troops in the European theater of operations.
During the war, the Soviet Armed Forces defeated and captured 507 divisions of Nazi Germany and 100 divisions of its European allies, and the Anglo-American forces - only 176. The total losses of the Nazis on the Soviet-German front amounted to 10 million (out of 13,600 thousand) people killed, wounded and prisoners. The damage to personnel inflicted on the Wehrmacht by the Soviet Army was four times greater than in the Western European and Mediterranean theaters of military operations combined, and in terms of the number of killed and wounded - six times. On the Soviet-German front, the main part was destroyed military equipment enemy - up to 75 percent. total losses of tanks and assault guns, over 75 percent. - aviation, 74 percent. - artillery pieces.
The heroic struggle of the Soviet people and their army instilled faith in victory in the consciousness of the peoples of the world and contributed to the strengthening of the anti-fascist national liberation movement, which moved from individual acts of resistance to partisan actions and armed uprisings. Under the leadership of their communist and workers' parties, the patriots of the countries enslaved by the Nazis rose up against the fascist invaders and inflicted tangible damage on them. Characteristic
in this regard, the appeal of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, with which it addressed its people on the day of the German attack on the Soviet Union. It said: “The blood of the heroic Soviet people is shed not only in the name of defending the country of socialism, but also in the name of the final social and national liberation of all working humanity. Therefore, this is also our struggle, and we must support it with all our might, not sparing our own lives."
Already on September 16, 1941, the Wehrmacht General Staff noted that with the beginning of the campaign against the Soviet Union, the Resistance movement intensified in all occupied countries.
“With their heroic defense of their homeland,” said former US Secretary of the Interior G. Ickes in July 1944, “the Russians not only proved to the whole world that Nazism could be defeated, but also inspired the struggle, ignited with courage those peoples of the United Nations who had long been are on the verge of despair. The myth of the invincibility of fascism was dispelled on the battlefields of Soviet Russia by the determined resilience of the people of Russia.
Names such as Stalingrad, Kharkov, Smolensk, Kyiv have become symbols of the unshakable courage and unbending will of the men and women of the United Nations, wherever they fought.”
An important area of activity of the Soviet Union in carrying out the liberation mission during the Great Patriotic War was the formation and training of foreign military units and formations in the USSR, as well as assistance to the population of the occupied countries of Central and South-Eastern Europe.
On the basis of intergovernmental agreements and at the request of patriotic organizations of foreign countries during the war, with the help of the Soviet Union, 2 combined arms armies, 3 army, tank and air corps, 30 infantry, artillery and air divisions, 31 brigades and 182 regiments were created for various purposes, 9 military schools, 19 officer schools, courses and training centers, a large number of individual battalions, squadrons, divisions, air squadrons and other units of Polish, Czechoslovak, Yugoslav, Romanian, Hungarian and French formations. Their total number reached more than 555 thousand people.
Foreign units and formations formed on the territory of the USSR received the latest weapons and military equipment of Soviet production. 16,502 guns and mortars, 1,124 tanks and self-propelled artillery mounts, 2,346 aircraft, 900 thousand rifles, carbines and machine guns, 40,627 machine guns and many other military equipment and materials were transferred to their arsenal.
The Soviet command showed great concern for the combat and moral-political training of soldiers of foreign formations. For this purpose, over 20 thousand Soviet specialists were sent to formations and units of a number of states at the request of their governments, passing on to them the rich combat experience of the Soviet Armed Forces. Units and formations of foreign troops formed in the USSR, at the request of the personnel, as their training was completed, were sent to the front.
The baptism of fire for units and formations of Czechoslovakia, Poland and Romania was the first battles on the Soviet-German front of the 1st Czechoslovak Infantry Battalion under the command of Lieutenant Colonel L. Svoboda in the Sokolow region (March 1943), the 1st Polish Infantry Division named after. T. Kosciuszko, General of the Brigade 3. Berling near Lenino (October 1943), as well as the 1st Romanian Volunteer Division named after. T. Vladimirescu Colonel N. Cambra, who took part in the final stage of the Iasi-Chisinau operation (August 1944). They had great value for the further rise of the national liberation movement of the peoples of Europe. In these battles the military commonwealth of the Soviet Army was born With by the people's armies of the countries of Central and South-Eastern Europe.
During the liberation mission, the Soviet Union and its Armed Forces provided the population of foreign countries with food, medicine, industrial goods and raw materials, and helped in the restoration and establishment of war-torn economies. About 1 million tons of food were transferred from army reserves alone to the population of the liberated states. In the harshest days of the war, the Soviet people brotherly shared everything they could with the peoples of these countries.
The USSR also helped train partisan cadres to fight against the Nazis in countries they had previously occupied. At the Ukrainian headquarters of the partisan movement, at the request of the democratic forces, special groups of organizers were trained to penetrate behind enemy lines. During 1944 alone, about a hundred such groups with a total number of more than two thousand people were sent to Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Romania. They became the core of many partisan detachments and formations that dealt significant blows to the invaders. More than 40 thousand Soviet citizens fought against fascism in the ranks of patriots of foreign countries.
With the advance of Soviet troops to the west, especially after they entered the territory of a number of European states, many Soviet partisan formations joined the Resistance Movement. In the spring of 1944, 7 formations and 26 separate detachments were relocated to Poland, in which 12 thousand Soviet partisans operated. By the end of January 1945, 14 formations and 12 Soviet-Czechoslovak detachments with a total number of 7 thousand people were fighting in the Czech Republic and Moravia; more than 17 thousand Soviet partisans were fighting in Slovakia.
The Soviet Union's support for the patriotic forces of European countries enslaved by Hitler's Germany, the direct participation of Soviet people in the anti-fascist armed struggle outside the Motherland contributed to the expansion of the Resistance movement in Europe, making it an effective front in the fight against fascism, a school of civic duty and internationalism of the working people.
Among the measures taken by the Soviet government to protect the vital interests of the peoples subjected to Hitler's occupation or under the threat of their capture, an important place is occupied by the entry of units of the Soviet Army together With British troops to Iran in August 1941. As is known, before this, the territory of Iran was used by the Nazis in order to open here a new front of struggle against the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition, primarily against the USSR. This not only threatened the Soviet Union, but also contradicted the vital interests of the Iranian people themselves. August 26, 1941 according to With According to the Soviet-Iranian Treaty of 1921, Soviet troops entered Iran as part of the rifle and cavalry corps of the Central Asian and Transcaucasian military districts. With this, the Soviet Armed Forces, for the first time in World War II, carried out a direct liberation mission against the people of a neighboring country, who were in danger of fascist enslavement.
On March 27, 1944, when Soviet troops entered the territory of Romania, the second period began in the fulfillment of their international duty. The Soviet Army immediately began to liberate the peoples of Europe from the oppression of the occupiers and complete the defeat of fascism. If in general political terms this task stood from the very beginning of the war, then in operational-strategic terms it was set when planning the summer-autumn campaign of the Soviet Army of 1944 and was clearly formulated in the May Day (1944) order of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief. The Soviet troops were entrusted with: clearing our entire land from fascist invaders and restoring the state borders of the Soviet Union along the entire line, from the Black Sea to the Barents Sea; to rescue our brothers the Poles, Czechoslovaks and other peoples of Europe allied with us who were under the heel of Hitler’s Germany from German captivity. Our troops were supposed to withdraw the satellite countries of Nazi Germany from the war and help their peoples liberate themselves from fascist oppression.
To carry out these tasks, the Supreme Command Headquarters attracted most of the Soviet Armed Forces. For more than a year, over 7 million Soviet soldiers fought stubborn battles with the Nazis on the territory of European countries, about 1.5 million people fought in the war with Japan. 11 front-line formations, 2 air defense fronts, 4 fleets, 50 combined arms, 6 tank, 13 air armies, 3 air defense armies and 3 flotillas took part in the operations to liberate the peoples of Europe and Asia. 11 European and 2 Asian states with a population of about 200 million people were completely or partially liberated.
The foreign policy of the Soviet Union towards the liberated countries was carried out in strict accordance with Leninist principles, as evidenced by historical documents. Thus, in the Statement of the Soviet Government in connection with the entry of the Soviet Army into the territory of Romania, it was stated that “The Supreme High Command of the Red Army gave the order to the Soviet advancing units to pursue the enemy until his defeat and surrender. At the same time, the Soviet Government declares that it does not pursue the goal of acquiring any part of Romanian territory or changing the existing social system of Romania and that the entry of Soviet troops into Romania is dictated solely by military necessity and the continuing resistance of enemy troops.” Similar statements by official Soviet government and military bodies were made as the Soviet Army approached the brink 
citizens of other European countries. They especially emphasized the idea that the Soviet Army was entering the lands of foreign states not as a conqueror, but as a liberator of enslaved peoples from the oppression of the Nazi invaders.
Soviet troops entered the territories of foreign countries not against the will of their people, as bourgeois falsifiers of history claim, but on the basis of relevant intergovernmental agreements, true to their allied duty (as was the case in Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Poland, Norway and China), into the countries of the fascist bloc - in accordance with the international documents of the states of the anti-Hitler coalition, which provided for the defeat of Nazi Germany and its allies, the elimination of the Nazi order and the liberation of the peoples of these countries from fascist oppression.
In August - October 1944, the Soviet Army conducted military operations to liberate Romania, and in September it carried out its liberation campaign in Bulgaria. In October, she carried out the Belgrade operation, providing assistance to the Yugoslav people in the struggle for the independence of their homeland. Having defeated Hitler’s troops in the Balkans together with formations of the People’s Liberation Army of Yugoslavia and the Bulgarian People’s Army, the troops of the 3rd Ukrainian Front forced the fascist German command to withdraw their Army Group “E” from Greece and Albania. In September 1944, the Soviet Army forced Finland to withdraw from the war, and in October liberated the northern regions of Norway. For six months she fought stubborn battles on the territory of Hungary, about 8 months in Czechoslovakia and almost 10 months in Poland. In early April 1945, Soviet troops liberated the eastern regions of Austria and its capital Vienna, and in early May the Danish island of Bornholm. In the Berlin and Prague operations, the defeat of the Wehrmacht was completed, which led to the complete elimination of the fascist “new order” and the liberation of all peoples, including German, from Nazi oppression.
True to its allied duty, the Soviet Union began military operations against militaristic Japan on the night of August 9, 1945. And again, the USSR set the political goal of this war to “bring the onset of peace closer, to free peoples from further sacrifices and suffering...”. As a result of the rapid advance of the Soviet Armed Forces by the end of August from the entire territory of Northeast China and North Korea The Japanese invaders were completely driven out.
The crushing defeat by the Soviet Army of the main forces of the states of the fascist-militarist bloc played a decisive role in the liberation of those countries where Soviet troops did not enter. The peoples of France, Belgium, Holland, Greece, Burma, Indonesia and other states that experienced the horrors of the German and Japanese occupation remember this with gratitude.
Soviet soldiers carried high through the countries of Europe and Asia the battle banners of the liberating army, raised by the Communist Party in the spirit of internationalism and brotherhood with the working people of all nations. In the course of carrying out this noble mission, political agencies and party organizations of the Soviet Army helped soldiers, sergeants and officers assess the social role of various segments of the population of the liberated countries from class positions, and provide all possible assistance to progressive forces. Attention was paid to strict adherence to international law, respect for national traditions and local customs.
The ideas of class solidarity and humanism allowed Soviet soldiers to rise above personal experiences, and for many of them, the tragedies that fascism brought them. Marshal of the Soviet Union G.K. Zhukov well showed the change in the mood of the soldiers that occurred in connection with the entry into enemy territory: “To be honest, when the war was going on, I was determined to repay in full all the fascists for their cruelty. But when, having defeated the enemy, our troops entered Germany, we restrained our anger. Our ideological convictions and international feelings did not allow us to give in to blind revenge." .
Fulfilling their international duty, Soviet soldiers showed massive heroism and dedication. Of the 11,603 people awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union during the Great Patriotic War, more than 8 thousand received this title in 1944-1945.
Soviet soldiers paid a heavy price for the liberation of the peoples of foreign countries from fascism. The total losses of the Soviet Army during this mission exceeded 3 million people, of which over 600 thousand people died in battles on the territory of Poland, more than 140 thousand in Czechoslovakia, 69 thousand in Romania, over 140 thousand in Hungary, and over 140 thousand in Austria. 26 thousand, Yugoslavia (only in the Belgrade operation) - more than 8 thousand, in Germany, in Berlin operation- 102 thousand. Material costs were also high.
A feature of the liberation mission of the Soviet Armed Forces during the Second World War was that they acted hand in hand with the troops and patriotic forces of Yugoslavia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, at the final stage of the war - the Romanian, Bulgarian armies and Hungarian units, and in the defeat of the Japanese Kwantung Army - with the warriors of fraternal Mongolia. The emergence of a military community of socialist countries and their armies is one of the most important results of the liberation mission of the Soviet Armed Forces.
The greatness of the international feat of the Soviet people and their Armed Forces also lies in the fact that they not only played a decisive role in the liberation of peoples from fascism, but also helped many of them consolidate the freedoms they had won, take their own destiny into their own hands, and take the path of democracy and socialism . Necessary at It should be emphasized here that the fabrications of the bourgeois falsifiers of the story about the “export of revolution” by the Soviet Army have no basis. Social transformations were carried out by the masses under the leadership of their communist and workers' parties V favorable internal and external conditions. “Revolutions,” V.I. Lenin pointed out, “are not made to order, are not timed to coincide with one moment or another, but mature in the process of historical development and erupt at a moment determined by a complex of a number of internal and external reasons” (Political collection. cit., vol. 36, p. 531). By the time Soviet troops entered European countries, revolutionary situations had developed there. There were objective and subjective factors: the political maturity and organization of the proletariat, the leading role of the Marxist-Leninist parties in the national liberation movement, the readiness of the masses for decisive action. Having gone through the difficult trials of bourgeois-landlord regimes, war and occupation, the people longed for deep social changes. The Armed Forces of the Soviet Union, defeating the fascist occupiers and their accomplices, created favorable conditions for victory people's revolutions. The presence of Soviet troops fettered the forces of internal reaction, prevented them from starting a civil war, and deprived the imperialist powers of the opportunity to resort to military intervention.
The international feat of the Soviet Army brought it unfading glory. The peoples who got rid of the fascist yoke saw in the Soviet warrior a man of the new world, possessing high, noble moral qualities. Sincere gratitude to the soldiers of the Soviet Liberating Army is captured in historical documents and statements of government officials, in works of literature and art. Streets, squares, schools, enterprises in many foreign countries are named after them, monuments and obelisks were erected to them. Many Soviet soldiers were awarded foreign orders and medals and were elected honorary citizens of the cities of Isel.
An expression of gratitude to the Soviet people and their soldiers is the fact that the dates of national holidays in a number of countries are directly related to the liberation mission of the Soviet Army: July 22 - National Revival Day of Poland, August 23 - Romania, September 9 - Bulgaria, April 4 - Hungary, May 8 - GDR, May 9 - Czechoslovakia.
The bourgeois military historical literature today talks a lot about the “liberation mission” of the armies of the United States and England. Their troops, as is known, at the final stage of the war entered the territory of France, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Greece, and later Germany. However, their arrival in these countries was radically different in their socio-political character. from missions of the Soviet Army. The American and British occupation authorities used all kinds of measures to stop the development of the progressive socio-political process in Europe. Thus, in Greece, where the revolutionary wave rose especially high, the British troops who landed in the fall of 1944 carried out a bloody massacre of Greek patriots - fighters against fascism and, by force of arms, restored an anti-people, monarchical regime in the country. In Italy, the presence of numerous American and British troops created an obstacle to the growing revolutionary upsurge of the masses. After the landing of American-British troops in France in the summer of 1944, the Western powers tried in every possible way to disorganize the Resistance movement and put an end to it as quickly as possible. “...While the imperialist troops rob and oppress the population of the countries they occupied and hinder their development, Soviet officers and soldiers provided us with fraternal assistance in cultural and economic construction,” noted G. Dimitrov.
Decisive the contribution of the USSR and its Armed Forces to the defeat of fascism and Japanese militarism, to the liberation of many peoples of Europe and Asia from the oppression of the occupiers contributed to the creation favorable conditions for the formation of a world socialist system, a fundamental change in the balance of forces between two opposing socio-economic systems in favor of the forces of peace and socialism.
In the fire of the Second World War, thanks to the world-historical victories of the Soviet Union in Europe, anti-people regimes collapsed, especially Hitler's Reich - the main breeding ground for militarism, racism and ardent anti-communism. The anti-fascist liberation movement led by the working class and its vanguard - the communist and workers' parties - grew into a struggle against the very foundations of capitalism. Socialism has expanded its horizons far. In Europe, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Hungary, the German Democratic Republic, Albania took the path of socialist construction during the war and in the post-war period; in Asia and Latin America - Vietnam, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, China, Cuba and Laos. The People's Republic of Kampuchea has now taken the course towards building a socialist society.
In Europe the ruins were still smoking, and ruling circles The USA and Great Britain have already begun to develop plans hostile to the Soviet Union and the entire socialist community. The reactionary forces of imperialism, fearing the ideas of peace and socialism and their popularity among millions ordinary people planet, launched a psychological war against the forces of peace and social progress. Just four years after the defeat of Nazi Germany, they united into the North Atlantic Alliance (NATO bloc) to prepare new war against the USSR and young socialist states.
Engaged in peaceful creative work, the Soviet Union and other countries of the socialist community, in an atmosphere of sharp aggravation of international tension in response to the creation of a military bloc by the imperialist powers and their strengthening of military preparations, were forced to take measures to further increase their defense capability and strengthen the combat power of their armed forces. On May 14, 1955, the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance was concluded in Warsaw. In it they found their embodiment and further development Lenin's ideas about the commonwealth and mutual assistance of socialist countries, about the consolidation of economic and military efforts to protect revolutionary gains.
The military community of socialist countries and their armies arose during the liberation mission of the Soviet Armed Forces in Europe. In the post-war period, it strengthened and expanded, and now forms the cornerstone of the Warsaw Pact Organization - a fundamentally new form of military-political collective cooperation and mutual assistance of the socialist states of Europe. The Warsaw Pact is a defensive military-political alliance that reliably protects the gains of socialism, the sovereignty and independence of fraternal countries, and is a stronghold of peace and social progress.
The successes of socialism and the loss of imperialism's ability to dominate undividedly and control the destinies of peoples with impunity aroused fierce resistance from world reaction. This is precisely where the underlying reasons lie for the current unprecedented scale of intensification of its militant circles, and above all the ruling elite of the United States. It was their reckless policies and adventurist actions that aggravated the international situation to extremely dangerous levels and increased the threat of nuclear war.
The openly pursued course to achieve military superiority of the United States over the USSR and the NATO bloc over the Warsaw Pact Organization has become especially dangerous due to attempts at its practical implementation and a sharp increase in military preparations. For these purposes, the military spending of the United States and its allies is unprecedentedly increasing, qualitatively new systems of nuclear and conventional weapons are being created, armed forces are being built up in various regions of the world, and plans for the militarization of space are being rapidly developed.
The military superiority that the imperialist states are strenuously striving to achieve is a unique indicator of their aggressive aspirations. As one of the lessons of the pre-war period testifies, the main culprits of the Second World War - Germany, Japan and their satellites - strived for it. Therefore, relying on the existing parity between two opposing social systems, the USSR and its allies advocate gradually limiting and reducing weapons, maintaining an equal balance of forces at any given moment, but at an increasingly lower level.
The Soviet Union and other member states of the Warsaw Pact are putting forward a detailed program of action designed to help overcome the division of Europe into military-political groupings, increase the degree of trust in relations between all European states, maintain detente in international affairs, and prevent military conflicts.
However, “as a result of the growing aggressiveness of imperialism,” emphasized the leader of our party and state, Chairman of the Defense Council, Supreme Commander-in-Chief, Comrade K.U. Chernenko when he was presented with the Order of Lenin and the third gold medal “Hammer and Sickle”, a dangerous situation has been created in the world. It imposes on all of us, on all Soviet people, special requirements“: work as never before, organized and selfless, be constantly vigilant, strengthen the country’s defense in every possible way, do everything to weaken the military threat, to preserve peace.”
The armies of the Warsaw Pact member states have been guarding peace and socialism in a single battle formation for three decades now. The past years have clearly shown what an influential and beneficial role the Warsaw Treaty Organization plays in international affairs. The combined power of the allied countries invariably became an insurmountable barrier to the hegemonic aspirations of imperialism. Therefore, the immeasurable value in modern conditions have further strengthening of the Warsaw Treaty Organization, deepening economic, scientific and technical cooperation within the framework of CMEA, unity and coordination of the actions of our countries.
The Party and people place the highest responsibility for ensuring reliable security of the country on the Soviet Armed Forces. The personnel of the army and navy see their primary duty as fully maintaining the combat readiness of troops and forces at the proper level, in which units and ships can come out to defend the Motherland at any moment. Together with their brothers in arms - the soldiers of the armies of the countries participating in the Warsaw Pact, the defenders of the Land of the Soviets stand vigilantly guarding peace.
Foreign policy of the Soviet Union during the Patriotic War, vol. 1. - M.: Gospolitizdat, 1946, p. 34.
Foreign policy of the Soviet Union during the Patriotic War, vol. 1, p. 78.
USSR in the fight against fascist aggression, 1933-1945. - M.: Nauka, 1976, p. 230-231.
Torez M. Selected works, vol. 1. - M.: Gospolitizdat, 1959, p. 530.
Pravda, 1984, May 9; History of the Second World War 1939-1945, vol. 12. - M.: Voenizdat, 1982, p. 217.
History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, vol. 5, book. 1. - M.: Politizdat, 1970, p. 567-569; 50 years of the USSR Armed Forces. - L1: Military Publishing House, 1968, p. 454.
History of the Second World War 1939-1945, vol. 12. - M.: Voenizdat, 1982, p. 35.
History of Yugoslavia, vol. 2. - M.: Acad. Sciences, 1963, p. 193.
The Soviet Union and the struggle of the peoples of Central and South-Eastern Europe for freedom and independence 1941-1945. - M.: Nauka, 1978, p. 442.
USSR in the fight against fascist aggression, 1933-1945, p. 230-231.
Feat of the people. - M.: Nauka, 1981, p. 195.
USSR in the fight against fascist aggression, 1933-1945, p. 235.
The Soviet Union and the struggle of the peoples of Central and South-Eastern Europe for freedom and independence 1941 -1945, p. 444.
Military Historical Journal, 1976, No. 4, p. 6.
The liberation mission of the Soviet Armed Forces in the Second World War. 2nd ed. - M.: Politizdat, 1974, p. 9.
History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, vol. 5, book. 1, p. 577.
Liberation mission of the Soviet Armed Forces in the Second World War, p. 455.
Foreign policy of the Soviet Union during the Patriotic War, vol. 2, p. 105.
Foreign policy of the Soviet Union during the Patriotic War, vol. 3, p. 363.
Zhukov G.K. Memories and reflections. - M.: APN, 1969, p. 727.
50 years of the USSR Armed Forces, p. 441, 468; History of the Second World War 1939-1945, vol. 12, p. 48, 49.
The Soviet Union and the struggle of the peoples of Central and South-Eastern Europe for freedom and independence 1941 - 1945, p. 446.
Dimitrov G. Selected works, vol. 2. - Sofia: Literary Publishing House. to foreign lang., 1968, p. 601,
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January 17th, 2017 , 11:30 am
Senyavsky Alexander Spartakovich- Doctor of Historical Sciences, Chief Researcher, IRI RAS
http://iriran.ru/?q=senavsky
Sdvizhkov Oleg Vladimirovich- postgraduate student of the Department of History, Philosophy and Cultural Studies of Moscow State Humanitarian University. M.A. Sholokhova
http://mpgu.rf/postgraduate/sdvizhkov-oleg-vladimirovich/
Introduction (I)
In 2015, Russia celebrated its 70th anniversary - Victory Day over fascist
Germany and its satellites in the Great Patriotic War, as well as the end of the Second
World War, which ended with the defeat of militaristic Japan. Decisive contribution to
the crushing of the fascist invaders was brought about by the USSR, and this fact was obvious and indisputable in 1945, as was
the main, determining role of the Red Army in the liberation of many countries and peoples of Europe and Asia.
“...It was the Russian army that let the guts out of the German war machine” (1) - September 27, 1944
recognized the Prime Minister of Great Britain at war with Hitler, W. Churchill. And on February 25, 1945 he
stated: “Future generations will consider themselves equally indebted to the Red Army
unconditionally, like us who had the opportunity to witness these magnificent feats" (2).
General D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander expeditionary forces of the Second
front, future president USA, June 19, 1945 confirmed: “The campaigns carried out by the Red
The army, which suppressed all resistance in the East, played a major role in the defeat of Germany” (3).
And this is true. More than 80% (and according to some estimates, more than 90%) losses in manpower and
Hitler's Germany suffered technology on the Eastern Front. Heroic Soviet resistance
people of aggression launched by the Nazis against the USSR, saved Great Britain from the German
invasion, gave the United States time to mobilize its resources. Allies in the anti-Hitler war
coalition - Great Britain and the USA, each with its own geopolitical interests, sought
minimize your losses while the military enemy is the Third Reich, and the military ally is the USSR
(aka geopolitical competitor and ideological adversary) exhausted themselves in confrontation.
The opening of the Second Front in Western Europe was unjustifiably delayed, and the USSR spent two extra years
straining all his strength, almost single-handedly resisted the subordinate of Nazi Germany
the united military-economic potential of almost all of Europe. It only happened then
when it became obvious that the USSR could win without Anglo-American allies. Not comparable
Soviet human and material losses are enormous compared to the total losses of everyone else
allies in the anti-Hitler coalition - the price the USSR paid for the common Victory.
The USSR crushed not only Nazi Germany, but also brought it out of the war
satellites - Finland, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Hungary, which was accompanied in these countries
the collapse of pro-fascist regimes. At the final stage of World War II, when the Red
The army, liberating its previously occupied territories, reached the pre-war borders, and the end
the Nazi empire became obvious, all regimes of Hitler’s satellite states without exception
began to look for ways out of the war, to make attempts to break out from under the dictatorship of the Fuhrer and
break the alliance with him. And in almost all these countries the German authorities used military force
(somewhere successfully - Slovakia, Hungary, somewhere not - Bulgaria, Romania, Finland) in order to retain
their positions in them, taking direct occupation actions. And if for the elite allied with Hitler
states, the offensive of the Red Army and the collapse of regimes became a drama of the loss of their power and privileges, then
for the peoples of these countries, deliverance from military-authoritarian dictatorships, from the dictatorship of the Nazi “new
order”, and in a number of states and from the direct occupation actions of Germany, it really became
liberation.
But there were also countries whose people experienced everything for many years
the horrors of the Nazi occupation and the “new order” - the Czech Republic, Poland, Yugoslavia, Albania, etc.
All “non-Aryan” peoples (including Jews, Gypsies, Slavic peoples, etc.) were considered as
“human material” subject to enslavement, and eventually extermination in the interests of
prosperity for the Germans. And if tactically (before the victorious end expected by the Nazis)
war) in some annexed territories the occupation regime was more or less
“sparing” (for example, in the Czech Republic, where the population worked for the Reich), then for other populations, especially
in case of active resistance, hundreds of thousands and millions were exterminated (Poland, Yugoslavia and
etc.).
How the long-awaited liberators were greeted by the Red Army in many
countries of Europe. In total, the Red Army liberated almost 50% of the territory of modern European
states, not counting European Russia(11 countries in central and south-eastern Europe; currently
At the time, there are 16 countries in this territory) with a population significantly exceeding 120 million
people, and participated in the liberation of 6 more countries together with the allies.
But even where Soviet troops did not directly participate in combat
actions, it was they and the Soviet people behind them who created the fundamental conditions for
victory over the seemingly invincible, most powerful military machine of the Third Reich in history and for
liberation of peoples from Nazi occupation. Leader of Fighting France and Chairman of the Temporary
of the French Republic, Charles de Gaulle said on this occasion: “The French
they know what Soviet Russia did for them, and they know what exactly Soviet Russia played
main role in their liberation..." (4)
More than 70 years have passed since then. Not only did many events happen,
but also very complex processes, tectonic shifts in the development of humanity. USSR became
a superpower that competed on equal terms with the United States, which made a much smaller contribution to the Victory, but
were able to reap the benefits of victory more effectively. The Cold War lasted for almost half a century.
on,” in which former allies in the anti-Hitler coalition found themselves on opposite sides
barricades Arose, developed, and then collapsed
socialist system. The USSR itself collapsed with its
value system, ideology, role in world politics; The USA has become a one-man
world hegemon, imposing his values, way of life, ideology on the whole world, dictating
their interests to other countries, their foreign and domestic policies using a wide range of
zone of means - from instruments of “soft power” (from bribery of elites to “color revolutions”,
political technological revolutions) to direct forceful, military intervention. Changed
several generations, the front generation, participants and witnesses have almost completely passed away
events of the Second World War. And how are those distant military events seen now? Do they know
modern generations about the decisive role of the USSR in the defeat of Hitlerism, about the feat of the Red Army, about
the unparalleled heroism of the Soviet soldier? Does anyone remember how it was sung in the famous post-war song,
“saved peace, eternal peace, living peace for Seryozh with Malaya Bronnaya and Vitka with Mokhovaya”?
Alas! Survey of residents of countries that participated in the Second World War - Great Britain
Tania, France and Germany in 2015 (5), showed that only 13% of respondents
“gave” a key role in the liberation of Europe from fascism to the Red Army, and in Germany such
17%, in Great Britain - 13%, in France (hello de Gaulle!) - 8%. On average about a quarter
respondents were unable to answer the question of who played the key role in the liberation
Europe, the majority of the French (61%) and Germans (52%) gave the key role to American troops (with
than according to only 16% of British residents who gave the palm to their army -
46%). Thus, the knowledge and ideas of European residents about the Second World War are radically
disagree with real story, and talk about any gratitude from Europe for
towards a country that lost 27 million citizens in the fight against Nazi aggression,
material damage unprecedented in history does not occur at all.
How did it happen that modern Europeans do not remember their real
liberators, about who really saved them from the Nazi plague? After all, in the end
war, this was obvious not only to politicians, but also to most Europeans.
The transformation of consciousness and relatively adequate memory into unconsciousness did not happen suddenly, not
today and not yesterday. Several factors were at work here. First, the psychology of European
ordinary people who, for the most part, have little interest in history. Secondly, natural change
a series of generations, in which the departure of direct witnesses to events was accompanied by their replacement
generations who received information about the war indirectly (that is, through information channels
which depend on the information and historical policies of specific states). Thirdly, and
factors of external and domestic policy, including long-term
confrontation in the Cold War, which encouraged Western Europeans to view the USSR as
enemy, create an appropriate image from him, and therefore in the information-psychological
all the positive aspects of the war were repressed as
opponent country, and the history of relations (including joint
history of the fight against Nazism within the framework of the anti-Hitler coalition). Relevant
information and images were also provided to their own population, where in the victory over fascism
the merits of the United States (the dominant country of the Western world) or their own were extolled
(United Kingdom).
With the collapse of the USSR, the trend only intensified, as the West began to divide
and master the “Soviet legacy”, including the symbolic one (and the moral resource
the main winner of the Hitler regime is of great value and strength). Therefore, be surprised
the results of a representative survey that adequately reflects historical consciousness
Europeans regarding the Second World War, there is no need: long-term historical politics and
The propaganda worked very effectively. Another surprising thing is that with such propaganda
whole
13% of Europeans still adequately assess the role and contribution of the USSR to the Victory (especially since this
propaganda in recent years increasingly includes elements of open falsification and “demonization”
Soviet Union, the extreme manifestations of which are attempts to put Nazi Germany and
USSR, fascist and Soviet states on the same level, equate Stalin with Hitler, imagine
The USSR, along with Germany, was the culprit of the Second World War, as well as to tarnish the bright image
Soviet soldier and the Red Army as a whole, attributing to them massive war crimes -
robberies, looting, rape, etc.). But such a memory of Europeans cannot please us:
a population with a similar historical consciousness is pliable material for political
manipulation and incitement against our country.
And the historical policy of the West, which is one of its instruments
geopolitics and politics in the broad sense of the word, is characterized by active anti-Russian
direction. Today, the West as a whole—both the United States and the countries of the European Union—is purposefully and
a massive information policy is being consistently carried out in order to revise both the
essence and the results of the Second World War in order to disavow the fair
the liberating nature of the USSR's participation in it, it is not possible to imagine the Soviet Union and its Red Army
as liberators of Europe and Asia, and as aggressors (comparable to Nazi Germany),
take our Victory from us and attribute it exclusively to ourselves. At the same time, in a whole series
European countries are undergoing a creeping rehabilitation of the political regimes of Hitler’s satellites and
collaborators in the states occupied by the Nazis during the war, silencing
“unpleasant”, discrediting (primarily the elite of a number of countries) pages of history, and direct
ignoring the liberating nature of the Red Army’s campaign in Europe at the end of World War II
war.
The state of historical memory of World War II is very alarming.
war and in the post-Soviet space. In the former Baltic republics - now “independent”
states that are actually under external, American control (and the highest
government positions in different years were occupied by American citizens), included in the key
military-political and economic structures of the West, the dominant policy is Russophobia
and anti-Sovietism, including in the historical aspect. In relation to World War II they
manifested itself in unfounded accusations against the USSR of complicity with Germany in unleashing
war, and Baltic historians and politicians call the liberation from German occupation “new
occupation." Similar processes are taking place in Ukraine and in a number of other post-Soviet states, where
The joint history with Russia is being radically revised, including the history of the Second World War. IN
each state has its own specifics, but the general trend is the rehabilitation of its
collaborators, accomplices of the German Nazi occupiers and even extolling them as
national heroes - fighters for liberation (both from the “yoke of Bolshevism” and from the “Russian
empire", and from the Russians).
And in modern Russia over the past quarter century, the state of historical
the memory of the war was constantly being tested: by a decrease in the quality of history teaching
and curtailment of its volume, mass stuffing of journalistic works that falsify
history (writings of Rezun-Suvorov, etc., attacks on the heroic symbols of the Great Patriotic War,
“artistic” films that introduce “black myths” into the mass consciousness and overturn the real
history upside down), etc. The Soviet soldier-liberator of Europe is also denigrated,
Liberation mission of the Red Army as a whole.
It should be emphasized that the very study of the Red Liberation Mission
The army in Russian historiography was not free from shortcomings: firstly, it
occurred mainly in Soviet historiography (with understandable ideological complications);
secondly, it came down mainly to the study of the actual military side of this
a multilateral phenomenon - the course of events, military operations, chronology and geography of liberation. But,
as it turns out, today the most important objects information attacks by Russia's opponents are
other aspects of the foreign liberation stage of the war - the psychology and behavior of Soviet troops
on enemy territory and countries liberated from occupation in Eastern Europe and the Far East,
humanitarian aspects of war, including policies towards civilians,
material and cultural values, etc. However, these issues and a number of others “are not
eventful" aspects of the liberation campaign of the Red Army in 1944-1945. researchers
received the least attention, many of them fell completely out of the sight of historians.
* * *
History is politics turned to the past. This aphorism honestly reflects the unsightly
reality: historical science is by no means distinguished by academic abstraction and purity,
but almost always politically and/or economically engaged. And rarely do any historians
manages to go against the existing trend while remaining scientifically objective,
especially in the study of meaningful, relevant and sensitive topics. This theme turned out to be the history of the Second
world war, affecting the vital interests of many countries of the world, and therefore the politics in it
research has always influenced historical science.
The struggle over the interpretation of the history of World War II began soon
after its completion in the context of the confrontation between two social systems,
but became extremely acute during and after the collapse of the USSR and everything
"socialist camp". The reason is that the course and results of the Second World War for half a century formed the basis for
The Yalta-Potsdam world order system with its bipolar structure, and the collapse of one of
poles in the late 1980s - early 1990s. caused a geopolitical catastrophe. Happened
transformation of the socio-economic models of countries that were previously part of the Soviet bloc or
composition of the USSR, their integration into Western civilization with Anglo-Saxon dominance, the desire
new elites of these countries to demonstrate loyalty to the new “suzerains”, primarily the USA,
through “repulsion” from Russia, even post-Soviet, and the West itself - to the maximum
“master” (if possible appropriate) the “Soviet legacy.” For this and
the previously downplayed and distorted role of the USSR in the world war was subjected to
to even more sophisticated distortion and denigration.
The final stage of the Great Patriotic War, namely
liberation by the Red Army of a number of countries in Eastern and Central Europe, including the main
enemy of the anti-Hitler coalition - Germany (6). In the USSR, this campaign in Europe (after liberation)
the birth of their own temporarily occupied territories) was first conceptualized in the political
(formed during the war itself) (7), and then in the historical concept of the “Liberation Mission”.
The fact that the decisive role of the USSR in the liberation of Europe arouses particularly fierce hostility among modern
political and pseudo-scientific elite of the West, it is no coincidence: Europe under the leadership
Nazi Germany brought enslavement, destruction and death to Russia, and the Red Army to the peoples
Europe - liberation and salvation from Nazi slavery. Is it possible to forgive and leave this?
this mission unsullied and undistorted? After all, most European countries were dirty either
direct alliance with Hitler, or - from conquered countries - mass collaboration, especially
among their elite. But also in countries allied with the USSR at that time, from the time of the Cold War right up to
to today prefer to rearrange accents, carry out inversion from a positive image
Soviet soldier-liberator to negative.
That is why it is extremely important to counter propaganda that distorts historical reality with scientific
studies reflecting the actual role of the Red Army in the liberation of Europe.
________________________________________ __________________
1. Correspondence of the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR with US presidents and prime ministers
Great Britain during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945. In 2 volumes. Ed. 2nd. T. 1.
Correspondence with W. Churchill and K. Atlee (July 1941 - November 1945). M.: Politizdat,
1976. P. 305.
2. The greatness of the feat of the Soviet people: Foreign responses and statements of 1941-1945 about
The Great Patriotic War / Comp. A.I. Babin et al. M.: International relations,
1985. P. 280.
3. The greatness of the feat of the Soviet people. P. 298.
4. Ibid. P. 274.
5. The survey was conducted by ICV Researche for the Sputnik agency as part of the Sputnik project
from March 20 to April 9, 2015
6. See: “Atrocities” of the Red Army, or the bloody trail of liberation // Russia in foreign television
and radio broadcasts. RIA Novosti. No. 046. April 6—19, 2005, p. 9; Senyavskaya E.S. Red Army in Europe
in 1945: old and new stereotypes of perception in Russia and the West // Observer—Observer.
Scientific-analytical journal. 2012. No. 2. P. 111-127; No. 3. P. 85-101.
7. See: Senyavsky A.S. Liberation mission of the Red Army in 1944-1945: formation
and the evolution of official discourse // Teaching national history: historical facts and them
interpretations: materials of the XVIII All-Russian. scientific-practical conf. M.: Econ-inform,
2014. pp. 284-292.
