World War II 1939-1945 - the largest war in the history of mankind, unleashed by fascist Germany, fascist Italy and militaristic Japan. 61 states (more than 80% of the world's population) were drawn into the war, military operations were conducted on the territory of 40 states.
In 1941, when the Nazis attacked the USSR, Great Britain was already at war with Germany, and the contradictions between the USA, Germany and Japan were on the verge of an armed conflict.
Immediately after the German attack on the USSR, the governments of Great Britain (June 22) and the United States (June 24) supported the Soviet Union in its fight against fascism.
On July 12, 1941, a Soviet-English agreement was signed in Moscow on joint actions against Germany and its allies, which served as the beginning of the formation of the anti-Hitler coalition.
On July 18, 1941, the government of the USSR signed an agreement with the government of Czechoslovakia, and on July 30 with the government of Poland on a joint fight against a common enemy. Since the territory of these countries was occupied by Nazi Germany, their governments were located in London (Great Britain).
On August 2, 1941, a military-economic agreement was concluded with the United States. At the Moscow meeting, held September 29-October 1, 1941, the USSR, Great Britain and the USA considered the issue of mutual military supplies and signed the first protocol on them.
On December 7, 1941, Japan launched a war against the United States with a surprise attack on the American military base at Pearl Harbor in the Pacific Ocean. On December 8, the United States, Great Britain and a number of other states declared war on Japan; On December 11, Nazi Germany and Italy declared war on the United States.
At the end of 1941, Australia, Albania, Belgium, Great Britain, Haiti, Guatemala, Honduras, Greece, Denmark, the Dominican Republic, India, Canada, China, Costa Rica, Cuba, Luxembourg, the Mongolian People's Republic were at war with the aggressor bloc. Republic, Netherlands, Nicaragua, New Zealand, Norway, Panama, Poland, El Salvador, USSR, USA, Philippines, France, Czechoslovakia, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Yugoslavia, Union of South Africa. In the second half of 1942, Brazil and Mexico entered the war against the fascist bloc, in 1943 - Bolivia, Iraq, Iran, Colombia, Chile, in 1944 - Liberia. After February 1945, Argentina, Venezuela, Egypt, Lebanon, Paraguay, Peru, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, and Uruguay joined the anti-Hitler coalition. Italy (in 1943), Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania (in 1944), Finland (in 1945), which were previously part of the aggressive bloc, also declared war on the countries of the Nazi coalition. By the time hostilities with Japan ended (September 1945), 56 states were at war with the countries of the fascist bloc.
(Military Encyclopedia. Chairman of the Main Editorial Commission S.B. Ivanov. Military Publishing. Moscow. In 8 volumes 2004. ISBN 5 203 01875 - 8)
The contribution of individual countries to the achievement of the goals of the anti-Hitler coalition varied. The USA, Great Britain, France and China participated with their armed forces in the struggle against the countries of the fascist bloc. Separate formations of some other countries of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, India, Canada, the Philippines, Ethiopia, and others also took part in hostilities. Some of the states of the anti-Hitler coalition (for example, Mexico) helped its main participants mainly by supplying military raw materials.
The United States and Great Britain made a significant contribution to achieving victory over a common enemy.
On June 11, 1942, the USSR and the USA signed an agreement on mutual supplies under Lend-Lease, i.e. lending of military equipment, weapons, ammunition, equipment, strategic raw materials and food.
The first deliveries arrived back in 1941, but the bulk of the deliveries came in 1943-1944.
According to American official data, at the end of September 1945, 14,795 aircraft, 7,056 tanks, 8,218 anti-aircraft guns, and 131,600 machine guns were sent from the USA to the USSR; 1188 tanks were delivered from Canada, which has been directly involved in providing assistance to the USSR since the summer of 1943. In general, US military supplies during the war years amounted to 4% of the military production of the USSR. In addition to weapons, the USSR received cars, tractors, motorcycles, ships, locomotives, wagons, food and other goods from the USA under Lend-Lease. The Soviet Union supplied the USA with 300,000 tons of chrome ore, 32,000 tons of manganese ore, a significant amount of platinum, gold, and timber.
Some of the American cargo (about 1 million tons) did not reach the Soviet Union, because it was destroyed by the enemy in the process of transportation.
There were about ten routes for the delivery of goods under Lend-Lease to the USSR. Many of them took place in areas of intense hostilities, which required great courage and heroism from those who provided supplies.
Main routes: across the Pacific Ocean through the Far East - 47.1% of all cargo; across the North Atlantic, bypassing Scandinavia - to Murmansk and Arkhangelsk - 22.6%; through the South Atlantic, the Persian Gulf and Iran - 23.8%; through the ports of the Black Sea 3.9% and through the Arctic 2.6%. Aircraft moved by sea and independently (up to 80%) through Alaska - Chukotka.
Comments
World War II lasted 2194 days. It was attended by 72 states with a population of 1,700 million people (80% of the world's population). Only 6 states remained neutral, and hostilities were conducted on the territory of 40 states. 110 million people were mobilized. More than 60 million people died, among whom, along with military personnel, there were many civilians.
The main burden of the Second World War fell on the USSR, our country became the main obstacle to the spread of German fascist domination and Japanese militarism over other peoples. The overwhelming majority of Wehrmacht divisions were on the Soviet-German front. In terms of fierceness, scope and activity of the fighting, it far surpassed other fronts of the Second World War. On the Eastern Front, the enemy suffered 73% of the total losses. The armed forces of the USSR destroyed 506.5 German divisions and 100 divisions of Germany's satellite countries. England and the USA defeated no more than 176 divisions in Western Europe, North Africa and Italy. Having by the beginning of the war industrial production, inferior to fascist Germany by 2 times, having suffered huge losses, the Soviet Union already in 1943 produced weapons and military equipment 2 times more than Germany.
During the 4 years of the war, Soviet troops conducted 51 strategic, over 250 front-line and about 1000 army operations. Until the summer of 1944, the absolute majority of German divisions were on the Soviet-German front, although, of course, we must not completely forget about the battles in North Africa, on the island of Sicily, in southern Italy, in the mountains of Yugoslavia, about the actions of French, Italian and other partisans.
The main factor of victory was the superiority of the Soviet army in all components of the military confrontation. 11 thousand people became heroes of the Soviet Union. The great commander of the 20th century became the Marshal of Victory. Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov. Exceptional stamina, patience, diligence, hatred of the enemy and love for their homeland were shown by the Russian people, all peoples, united into a single whole. The war was national, sacred, great, patriotic.
Numerous memorial ensembles were erected in the USSR in the places of past battles. Tanks, planes, sea boats, artillery pieces stood on pedestals. But the main memory belongs to the people, to each new generation of Russians, who on May 9 say: "Eternal glory to the heroes!"
"Cold War": reasons
| Causes | Content | results | ||
| Political: | ||||
| Fear of further spread of influence of the USA and the USSR. · Presence all over the world of supporters of the USA and the USSR. The need to rally supporters in the face of a threat from the opposite camp | · Development of a common strategy, creation of blocs, holding bilateral and multilateral meetings. Support for your supporters in the enemy's country | · The US and its allies won the Cold War over the USSR and its allies. As a result of “perestroika”, pro-Western forces came to power in Russia and began to carry out reforms with the aim of consistent Westernization of the country | ||
| Economic: | ||||
| · Struggle for resources, product markets. Weakening of the economic power of the enemy during the military-political confrontation | · The use of various means of negative influence on the development of the enemy's economy. · Arms race | Constant pressure on the economy of the USSR, an unbearable arms race and the lack of reasonable reforms led to the collapse of the Soviet economy, the fall of positions in the world economy | ||
| Military: | ||||
| · Fear of the military power of the enemy. Providing advantages in the event of the outbreak of the Third World War | · Fierce intelligence struggle, military-industrial espionage. Checking the enemy in numerous local and regional conflicts | · The Soviet war machine stalled in Afghanistan. The progressive collapse of the USSR led to a significant weakening of military power | ||
| Ideological: | ||||
| · To prevent the acquaintance of the population of the enemy countries with the attractive aspects of the life of an alien society. The total struggle of communist and liberal-bourgeois ideology | · Restriction of contacts between citizens of opposing countries. · Psychological treatment of the population in the spirit of hostility, hatred for the opposite side. Promotion of attractive ideas, their dissemination | · Western way of life, high standard of living turned out to be very attractive for the citizens of the USSR, many of whom emigrated. The media in the USSR gradually adopted Western ways of processing public consciousness |
Comments
The strengthening of the positions of socialism throughout the world and the growth of the international prestige of the USSR were seen as a great threat by the US government, which during the years of World War II turned into the most powerful state in the capitalist world. The United States was the only country with nuclear weapons. American President G. Truman and British Prime Minister W. Churchill formulated the idea of a "cold war" against the USSR. The goal of this war was proclaimed to be the "rejection of communism". The means of realizing this goal were: the imposition of an exhausting arms race on the USSR; deployment of a network of military bases around the USSR; the creation of a military-political bloc of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization - NATO in 1949; various methods of economic pressure, etc.
The Soviet leadership, headed by Stalin, was interested in maintaining economic cooperation with the former allies in the anti-Hitler coalition, but he had no desire to succumb to American dictates. The position of the United States was viewed as aggressive, which began to be used within the country for propaganda and communist education of the population. The presence of a permanent and dangerous enemy - American imperialism, the constant aggravation of the country's international position served as a convenient explanation for the slow rise in the living standards of the population.
The Soviet leadership did not abandon the idea of a world socialist revolution. As the economic and military-political power of the USSR grew, so did the political ambitions of the Soviet leaders. Increasing financial and military assistance was provided to countries that embarked on the path of socialist construction and freed themselves from colonial dependence. Supported the communist, workers, anti-war movement in Western countries.
In the Cold War there were exacerbations and detentes. The USSR and the USA did not enter into direct military confrontation, but in most international conflicts they stood behind the backs of the opposing sides.
Under the conditions of perestroika, MS Gorbachev proposed the concept of new thinking in the system of international relations, which provided for the resolution of controversial issues through negotiations, the reduction of armaments, and the dissolution of military blocs. In 1990, the Warsaw Pact Organization was dissolved. In the fall of 1990, West and East Germany unified, with the unified FRG remaining a part of the NATO bloc. And in September-December 1991, the USSR collapsed. NATO and the US have taken control of the entire world.
Strengthening the country's defense capability on the eve of the warThe Second World War, which began on September 1, 1939, forced the Soviet government to pay serious attention to strengthening the country's defense capability. The Soviet Union had every opportunity to solve this problem. Bolshevik modernization, carried out under the leadership of I.V. Stalin, turned the USSR into a powerful industrial power. By the end of the 30s. The Soviet Union came second in the world and first in Europe in terms of total industrial production. As a result of the industrial market, in a short historical period (13 years), such modern sectors of the economy as aviation, automotive, chemical, electrical, tractor building, etc. were created in the country, which became the basis of the military-industrial complex.
Strengthening the defense capability was carried out in two directions. The first is the build-up of the military-industrial complex. From 1939 to June 1941, the share of military spending in the Soviet budget increased from 26% to 43%. The output of military products at that time was more than three times ahead of the general rate of industrial growth. In the east of the country, defense plants and backup enterprises were built at an accelerated pace. By the summer of 1941, almost 20% of all military factories were already located there. The production of new types of military equipment was mastered, some samples of which (T-34 tanks, BM-13 rocket launchers, Il-2 attack aircraft, etc.) were qualitatively superior to all foreign counterparts. In June 1941, the army had 1225 T-34 tanks (design bureau M.I. Koshkin) and 638 heavy tanks KV (design bureau Zh.Ya. Kotin). However, it took at least 2 years to completely re-equip the tank fleet.
On the eve of the war, Soviet aviation was also in the stage of rearmament. By this time, most of the aircraft that brought world fame to the country and set 62 world records had already lost their superiority over foreign technology. It was necessary to update the aircraft fleet, to create a new generation of combat vehicles. Stalin constantly followed the development of aviation, met with pilots and designers.
The slightest changes in the design of mass-produced machines were made only with the permission of Stalin and were formalized by resolutions of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR. Since the beginning of 1941, the aviation industry has completely switched to the production of only new aircraft. By the beginning of the war, the army received 2.7 thousand of the latest aircraft: Il-2 attack aircraft (Design Bureau S.V. Ilyushin), Pe-2 bombers (Design Bureau V.M. Petlyakov), LaGG-3 and Yak-1 fighters (Design Bureau S A. Lavochkin, A. I. Mikoyan and A. S. Yakovlev Design Bureau). However, new types of aircraft accounted for only 17.3% of the aircraft fleet of the USSR Air Force. Only 10% of combatant pilots managed to master the new machines. Thus, the process of re-equipping the Air Force was in full swing and it took at least 1.5 years to complete it.
The second direction of strengthening the country's defense capability was the reorganization of the Red Army, increasing its combat capability. The army moved from a mixed to a territorial-personnel system of organizations, which was introduced in the 1920s in order to save money. in the personnel system. On September 1, 1939, a law on universal conscription was introduced. The number of armed forces from August 1939 to June 1941 increased from 2 to 5.4 million people. The growing army needed a large number of qualified military specialists. At the beginning of 1937, there were 206,000 officers in the army. Over 90% of the command, military medical and military technical staff had higher education. Among political workers and business executives, from 43 to 50 percent received military or special education. At that time it was a good level.
Tens of thousands of officers received new assignments every year. Personnel leapfrog had a negative impact on the level of discipline and combat training of the troops. A huge shortage of commanders formed, which increased from year to year. In 1941, only in the ground forces there were not enough 66,900 commanders at the headquarters, and in the Air Force, the shortage of flight personnel reached 32.3%.
The Soviet-Finnish War (November 30, 1939 – March 12, 1940) exposed shortcomings in the Red Army's tactical training. Stalin removes Voroshilov from the post of People's Commissar of Defense. The new People's Commissar of Defense S. Timoshenko, analyzing the results of the war, in particular, noted that “our commanders and headquarters, having no practical experience, did not know how to really organize the efforts of the military branches and close interaction, and most importantly, they did not know how to really command ".
The results of the Finnish war forced Stalin to take a whole range of measures aimed at strengthening the command staff of the Red Army. So, on May 7, 1940, new military ranks were introduced in the Soviet Union, and a month later over 1,000 people became generals and admirals. Stalin made a bet on younger military leaders. People's Commissar of Defense Tymoshenko was 45 years old, and Chief of the General Staff K.A. Meretskov - 43. The Navy was headed by 34-year-old Admiral N.G. Kuznetsov, and the air force - 29-year-old General P.V. Levers. The average age of regimental commanders at that time was 29-33 years old, division commanders - 35-37 years old, and corps commanders and army commanders - 40-43 years old. The new nominees were inferior to their predecessors in terms of education and experience. Despite their great energy and desire, they did not have time to master their duties of leading troops in difficult conditions.
L. Trotsky, being in exile and waging an active struggle against Stalin, repeatedly publicly stated: “In the Red Army, not everyone is devoted to Stalin. They still remember me there." Realizing this, Stalin began a thorough cleaning of his main support - the army and the NKVD - from all "unreliable elements." Faithful ally of Stalin V.M. Molotov told the poet F. Chuev: “1937 was necessary. Considering that after the revolution we cut right and left, we won, but the remnants of enemies from different directions existed and in the face of the imminent danger of fascist aggression, they could unite. We owe to 1937 that we did not have a "fifth column" during the war.
On the very eve of the Great Patriotic War, as a result of the implementation of the non-aggression pact with Germany, the Soviet Union pushed its borders to the west by 400-500 km. The USSR included Western Ukraine and Western Belarus, as well as Bessarabia, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. The population of the Soviet Union increased by 23 million people. As Tippelskirch noted, many leading German generals regarded this as Hitler's blunder. In the spring of 1941, the General Staff of the Red Army, together with the headquarters of the districts and fleets, developed the "Plan for the Defense of the State Border of 1941", according to which the troops of the border districts were supposed to prevent the enemy from invading the territory of the USSR, firmly cover the mobilization, concentration and deployment with stubborn defense in fortified areas the main forces of the Red Army; active air operations to delay the concentration and disrupt the deployment of enemy troops, thereby creating the conditions for a decisive offensive. Covering the western border of the USSR with a length of 4.5 thousand km was assigned to the troops of 5 military districts. It was planned to include about 60 divisions in the first echelons of the covering armies, which, as the first strategic echelon, were supposed to cover the mobilization and entry into battle of the troops of the second strategic echelon. Despite the TASS statement of June 14, 1941, which refuted rumors of an impending war, starting from April 1941, urgent measures were taken to increase the combat readiness of the army. A number of these measures were built taking into account the proposals of the General Staff of May 15, 1941, according to which it was planned to defeat the main forces of the Nazi troops concentrated to attack the USSR (some historians, without sufficient grounds, believe that this document was "practical preparation on the instructions of Stalin preemptive strike against Germany).
In April-May, 800 thousand reservists were called up (under the guise of training camps) to replenish the troops of the western districts. In mid-May, a covert transfer of second-echelon troops in the amount of 7 armies (66 divisions) from the internal districts to the western ones began, bringing them to full combat readiness. On June 12, 63 divisions of the reserves of the western districts moved secretly, by night marches, into the composition of the covering armies to the border. On June 16, from the places of permanent deployment of the second echelon of the covering armies, the transfer (under the guise of exercises) to the places of concentration of 52 divisions began to be carried out. Although the Soviet troops were pulled up to the border, their strategic deployment was carried out without bringing the covering troops to repulse the aggressor's preemptive strike. The mistake of the military-political leadership at the moment consisted in an inadequate assessment of the state of the Armed Forces: the Red Army was not capable of launching a counterattack and did not have real capabilities for defense. The plan for covering the border, developed by the General Staff in May 1941, did not provide for the equipping of defensive lines by troops of the second and third operational echelons.
Preparing for a war against the USSR, the German leadership tried to hide its intentions. It saw the suddenness of the attack as one of the decisive factors in the success of the war, and from the very beginning of the development of its plans and preparations, it did everything possible to disorient the Soviet government and command. The leadership of the Wehrmacht sought to hide from the personnel of its troops for as long as possible all the data on Operation Barbarossa. In accordance with the instructions of the OKW headquarters of May 8, 1941, the commanders of formations and units had to inform the officers about the upcoming war against the USSR about 8 days before the start of the operation, the privates and non-commissioned officers - only in the very last days. The order required to create among the German troops and the population the impression that the landing on the British Isles was the main task of the summer campaign of the Wehrmacht in 1941, and the measures in the East "are of a defensive nature and are aimed at preventing the threat from the Russians." From the autumn of 1940 to June 22, 1941, the Germans managed to carry out a whole range of measures aimed at large-scale disinformation against England and the USSR. Hitler managed to drive a wedge of mistrust between Stalin and Churchill. The warnings of Soviet intelligence officers were contradictory and the country's leadership justifiably refused to listen to them. In addition, there was a belief that Hitler would not risk a war on two fronts, and England and the United States were provoking a premature clash between Germany and the USSR. According to Stalin's calculations, Germany could defeat England only not earlier than the spring of 1942.
However, the iron logic of Stalin did not take into account the adventurous spirit of Hitler. The well-known West German historian of the Second World War G.-A. Jacobsen writes that for Hitler the following considerations had much more weight in deciding to attack the USSR. “If the Soviet Union - England's last continental sword - is defeated, there is hardly any hope left for Great Britain for future resistance. She would have to stop fighting, especially if she could get Japan to act against England and East Asia before the US entered the war. If, in spite of all this, she continues to fight, Hitler decided, by capturing European Russia, to carry out the conquest of new huge economically important areas, using the reservoir of which, if necessary, he can withstand a longer war. Thus, his great dream was finally realized: Germany acquired in the East the living space that she claimed for her population. At the same time, no state in Europe could no longer challenge Germany's dominant position ... Not the least role was played by the fact that the "final clash" of both systems - National Socialism and Bolshevism - one day would still become inevitable; the moment seemed to Hitler the most favorable for this, for Germany had a strong, battle-tested armed force and, in addition, was a country highly equipped for war.
At a meeting at the Berghof on July 31, 1940, Hitler stated the following: “If Russia is defeated, England's last hope will fade. Germany will then become the ruler of Europe and the Balkans... In the course of this clash with Russia, it must be finished. In the spring of 1941... The sooner Russia is defeated, the better. The operation makes sense only if we defeat this state with one blow. Another major historian, the Englishman A. Taylor, notes that “the invasion of Russia can be presented (it will be presented by Hitler as such) as a logical consequence of the doctrines that he proclaimed for about 20 years. He began his political career as an anti-Bolshevik, set himself the task of destroying Soviet communism ... He saved Germany from communism, as he himself claimed; now he will save the world. "Lebensraum" (living space) was Hitler's doctrine, which he borrowed from geopolitics in Munich shortly after the First World War. Germany must have living space if she wants to become a world power, and it can only be mastered by conquering Russia.
Traditionally, in the history of the Great Patriotic War, there are three main stages:
. the initial period of the war - from June 22, 1941 to November 19, 1942,
. the period of a radical turning point in the course of the war - from November 19, 1942 to the end of 1943,
. the period of the victorious end of the war - from the beginning of 1944 to May 9, 1945
On the night of June 22, 1941, the German invasion of the USSR began without a declaration of war. Hitler's allies were Finland, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, Italy, who also sent their troops. Actual support for Germany was provided by Bulgaria, Turkey, Japan, formally remaining neutral. The factor of surprise played a decisive role in many respects in the temporary failures of the Red Army. In the very first hours and days, the Soviet troops suffered huge losses. On June 22, 1,200 aircraft were destroyed (800 of them at airfields). By July 11, about 600 thousand Soviet soldiers and officers were captured. Within a month, German troops advanced 350-500 km, reaching the old border. Another important factor in the failure of the Red Army was the lack of experience in modern warfare. German troops, who captured almost all of Europe, tested the latest schemes of battle tactics. In addition, as a result of the robbery of the occupied countries, the Nazis got various materials and property worth 9 billion pounds, which was twice the pre-war national income of Germany. At the disposal of the Nazis were weapons, ammunition, equipment, vehicles captured from 12 British, 22 Belgian, 18 Dutch, 6 Norwegian, 92 French and 30 Czechoslovak divisions, as well as weapons accumulated in the occupied countries, and the current production of their defense enterprises. As a result, the German military-industrial potential by June 1941 was 2.5 times higher than the Soviet one. It should also be taken into account that the main blow of the German troops was expected in a southwestern direction, towards Kyiv. In fact, the main blow of the German troops was inflicted by the Army Group "Center" in a westerly direction towards Moscow.
According to the Barbarossa plan, it was supposed to destroy the main forces of the Red Army in 10 weeks. The result of the plan was to expand the eastern border of the Reich to the line Arkhangelsk - Astrakhan. On June 30, 1941, the State Defense Committee (GKO) was created to lead the country's defense, headed by I.V. Stalin. On June 23, 1941, the Headquarters of the High Command of the Armed Forces was formed (from July 10 - the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command). It included A.N. Antonov, N.A. Bulganin, A.M. Vasilevsky (Chief of the General Staff since June 1942), N.G. Kuznetsov (Commissar of the Navy), V.M. Molotov, S.K. Timoshenko, B.M. Shaposhnikov (Chief of the General Staff in July 1941 - May 1942). On July 19, Stalin became People's Commissar for Defense, and on August 8, 1941 - Supreme Commander. As early as May 6, 1941, Stalin became chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR. Thus, in the hands of Stalin, formally, all party, state and military power was now united. Other emergency bodies were also created: the Evacuation Council, the Committee for the Accounting and Distribution of Labor, etc.
The outbreak of the war was an unusual war. A war began, in which it was not only about maintaining the social order or even statehood, but about the physical existence of the peoples inhabiting the USSR. Hitler emphasized that "we must wipe this country off the face of the earth and destroy its people."
According to the Ost plan, after the victory, the dismemberment of the USSR, the forced deportation of 50 million people beyond the Urals, genocide, the destruction of leading cultural centers, and the transformation of the European part of the country into a living space for German colonists were envisaged. “The Slavs must,” wrote Nazi Party Secretary M. Bormann, “work for us. If we don't need them, they may die. The health care system is not needed. Births among the Slavs are undesirable. They must use contraception and practice abortion, and the more the better. Education is dangerous. As for food, they should not receive more than necessary. During the war years, 5 million people were driven to Germany, of which 750 thousand died as a result of ill-treatment.
The inhuman plans of the Nazis, their brutal methods of warfare intensified the desire of the Soviet people to save the Motherland and themselves from complete extermination and enslavement. The war acquired a national liberation character and rightly went down in history as the Great Patriotic War. Already in the first days of the war, units of the Red Army showed courage and steadfastness. From June 22 to July 20, 1941, the garrison of the Brest Fortress fought. Heroic defense of Liepaja (June 23-29, 1941), Kyiv (July 7 - September 24, 1941), Odessa (August 5 - October 16, 1941), Tallinn (August 5-28, 1941), Moonsund Islands (September 6 - October 22, 1941), Sevastopol (October 30, 1941 - July 4, 1942), as well as the Battle of Smolensk (July 10 - September 10, 1941) made it possible to disrupt the "blitzkrieg" plan - a lightning war . Nevertheless, in 4 months the Germans reached Moscow and Leningrad, captured 1.5 million square kilometers with a population of 74.5 million people. By December 1, 1941, the USSR lost more than 3 million people killed, missing and captured.
The GKO in the summer and autumn of 1941 took a number of emergency measures. The mobilization was successfully carried out. Over 20 million people applied for enrollment in the Red Army as volunteers. At the critical moment of the struggle - in August - October 1941 - a huge role in the defense of Moscow and Leningrad and other cities was played by the people's militia, numbering about 2 million people. In the vanguard of the fighting people was the Communist Party; by the end of the war, up to 80% of the members of the CPSU (b) were in the army. During the war, almost 3.5 million were accepted into the party. In the battles for the freedom of the motherland, 3 million communists died, which amounted to 3/5 of the pre-war membership of the party. Nevertheless, the size of the party grew from 3.8 to 5.9 million. The lower levels of the party played a big role in the first period of the war, when, by decision of the GKO, city defense committees were established in more than 60 cities, headed by the first secretaries of the regional committees and city committees of the CPSU (b). In 1941, an armed struggle began behind enemy lines. On July 18, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks adopted a resolution “On the organization of the struggle behind the lines of the German troops”, which obliged the party committees to deploy underground party and Komsomol committees behind enemy lines, organize and lead the partisan movement.
On September 30, 1941, the battle for Moscow began. In accordance with the Typhoon plan, German troops surrounded five Soviet armies in the Vyazma region. But the encircled troops fought courageously, pinning down the significant forces of Army Group Center, and by the end of October helped stop the enemy at the Mozhaisk line. From mid-November, the Germans launched a new offensive against Moscow. However, by the beginning of December, the forces of the German group were completely exhausted. On December 5-6, Soviet troops launched a counteroffensive. By mid-January 1942, the enemy was pushed back 120-400 km. This victory of the Red Army was of great military and political significance. It was the first major German defeat since the start of World War II. The myth of the invincibility of the Nazi army was dispelled. The lightning war plan was finally thwarted. The victory near Moscow significantly strengthened the international prestige of our country and contributed to the completion of the creation of the anti-Hitler coalition.
Under the cover of the Red Army retreating in bloody battles, the most difficult work to mobilize the national economy was unfolding in the country. New people's commissariats were created for the operational management of key industries. Under the leadership of the Evacuation Council (Chairman N.M. Shvernik, Deputy N.A. Kosygin), an unprecedented transfer of industrial and other facilities to the East of the country took place. 10 million people, 1523 large enterprises, huge material and cultural values were taken there in a short time. Thanks to the measures taken, by December 1941, the decline in military production was stopped, and from March 1942 its growth began. State ownership of the means of production and the strictly centralized system of economic management based on it allowed the USSR to quickly concentrate all resources on military production. Therefore, yielding to the aggressors in terms of the size of the industrial base, the USSR was soon far ahead of them in the production of military equipment. Thus, for one metal-cutting machine in the USSR, 8 times more aircraft were produced, for each smelted ton of steel - 5 times more tanks.
A radical change in the work of the Soviet rear predetermined a radical change in combat operations. From November 19, 1942 to February 2, 1943, the Soviet troops of three fronts: Stalingrad (commander A.I. Eremenko), Don (K.K. Rokossovsky) and South-Western (N.F. Vatutin) - surrounded and destroyed Nazi troops near Stalingrad. The Stalingrad victory became a radical turning point in the course of the war. She showed the whole world the strength of the Red Army, the increased skill of Soviet military leaders, the strength of the rear, which provided the front with a sufficient amount of weapons, military equipment and equipment. The international prestige of the Soviet Union grew immeasurably, and the positions of fascist Germany were seriously shaken. From July 5 to August 23, 1943, the Battle of Kursk took place, which completed a radical change. From the moment of the Battle of Kursk, Soviet troops held the strategic initiative until the end of the war. During the period from November 1942 to December 1943, 50% of the occupied territory was liberated. G.K. Zhukova, A.M. Vasilevsky, K.K. Rokossovsky.
The partisan movement provided significant assistance to the Red Army. In May 1942, the Central Headquarters of the partisan movement was created, and the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks P. Ponomarenko was appointed chairman. In Moscow in 1942, a meeting of the commanders of the largest partisan formations was held (S.A. Kovpak, M.A. Naumov, A.N. Saburov, A.F. Fedorov and others). The partisan struggle gained its greatest scope in the North-West, in Belarus, a number of regions of Ukraine, and in the Bryansk region. At the same time, numerous underground organizations were engaged in reconnaissance, sabotage, and information of the population about the situation on the fronts.
At the final stage of the war, the Red Army had to complete the liberation of the territory of the USSR and liberate the countries of Europe. In January - February 1944, the Leningrad-Novgorod operation was carried out. On January 27, the blockade of the heroic Leningrad was liquidated, which lasted 900 days. In April - May, Odessa and Crimea were liberated. In the context of the opening of the second front (June 6, 1944), Soviet troops launched strikes in different directions. From June 10 to August 9, the Vyborg-Petrozavodsk operation took place, as a result of which Finland withdrew from the war. From June 23 to August 29, the largest summer offensive operation of the Soviet troops in the war took place - Operation Bagration to liberate Belarus, during which Belarus was liberated, and Soviet troops entered Poland. The Iasi-Kishinev operation on August 20-29 led to the defeat of German troops in Romania. In the autumn of 1944, Soviet troops liberated Bulgaria and Yugoslavia from the Nazis.
At the beginning of 1945, ahead of schedule, at the request of the Allies, who experienced difficulties due to the German offensive in the Ardennes, Soviet troops launched the Vistula-Oder operation (January 12 - February 3, 1945), as a result of which Poland was liberated . In February - March 1945, Hungary was liberated, and in April, Soviet troops entered Vienna, the capital of Austria. On April 16, the Berlin operation began. The troops of three fronts: the 1st and 2nd Belarusian and 1st Ukrainian (commanders - Marshals G.K. Zhukov, K.K. Rokossovsky and I.S. Konev) - within two weeks defeated the 1 millionth enemy group and on May 2 captured the capital of Nazi Germany. On the night of May 8-9, the surrender of Germany was signed. From May 6 to May 11, 1945, Soviet troops carried out the Prague operation, coming to the aid of the insurgent Prague and defeating German troops in Czechoslovakia.
The Soviet Union made a huge contribution to the victory over Japan. Within three weeks, from August 9 to September 2, the Soviet Army defeated the most combat-ready and powerful Kwantung Army of 1 million, liberating Manchuria, as well as South Sakhalin, the Kuril Islands and North Korea. September 2, 1945 Japan capitulated. The Second World War ended with the victory of the peace-loving, democratic, anti-militarist forces over the forces of reaction and militarism. The decisive contribution to the defeat of fascism was made by the Soviet people. Heroism and self-sacrifice became a mass phenomenon. The exploits of I. Ivanov, N. Gastello, A. Matrosov, A. Maresyev were repeated by many Soviet soldiers. During the war, the advantage of the Soviet military doctrine was revealed. Such generals as G.K. Zhukov, K.K. Rokossovsky, I.S. Konev, A.M. Vasilevsky, R.Ya. Malinovsky, N.F. Vatutin, K.A. Meretskov, F.I. Tolbukhin, L.A. Govorov, I.D. Chernyakhovsky, I.Kh. Bagramyan.
The unity of the peoples of the USSR has stood the test. It is significant that representatives of 100 nations and nationalities of the country became Heroes of the Soviet Union. The patriotic spirit of the Russian people played a particularly important role in the victory in the war. In his famous speech on May 24, 1945: “I raise a toast to the health of the Russian people first of all,” Stalin recognized the special contribution of the Russian people. Created in the late 30s. the administrative-command system made it possible to concentrate human and material resources in the most important directions for defeating the enemy.
The historical significance of the victory of the USSR in the war lies in the fact that the totalitarian, terrorist model of capitalism, which threatened world civilization, was defeated. The possibility of a democratic renewal of the world and the liberation of the colonies opened up. The Soviet Union emerged from the war as a great power.
Causes, nature, main stages of the Great Patriotic War
September 1, 1939 Germany attacked Poland. Thus began the Second World War. England and France, bound with Poland by a treaty of friendship and mutual assistance, declared war on Germany. During September, Poland was defeated. What the Anglo-French guarantees cost Poland was shown by the first month of the bloody war. Instead of 40 divisions, which the French headquarters promised the Polish command to throw against Germany on the third day of the war, only from September 9, individual units of 9 divisions carried out an unsuccessful operation in the Saar. Meanwhile, according to Jodl, Chief of the Wehrmacht General Staff, the Allies had 110 divisions on the Western Front against 22 German ones, as well as an overwhelming advantage in aviation. However, England and France, having the opportunity to conduct a major battle against the Germans, did not do this. On the contrary, Allied planes dropped leaflets over the trenches of the German troops with calls to turn their weapons against the Soviets. The so-called "strange war" began, when there was practically no fighting on the Western Front until April 1940.
On September 17, 1939, when the German troops reached Warsaw and crossed the line stipulated in the secret protocol, by decision of the Soviet government, the Red Army troops were ordered to "cross the border and take under their protection the life and property of the population of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus." The reunification of the peoples of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus with Russia into a single statehood was the end of their centuries-old struggle to restore historical justice, since the entire territory from Grodno, Brest, Lvov and the Carpathians is primordially Russian lands. For the majority of Ukrainians and Belarusians, the arrival of the Red Army in 1939 meant a truly historic deliverance from cruel national, social and spiritual oppression.
On September 28, 1939, an agreement "On Friendship and Borders" was signed between Germany and the USSR. According to the treaty, the western border of the USSR now ran along the so-called Curzon Line, recognized at one time by England, France, the USA and Poland. One of the secret protocols of the treaty stipulated that a small part of southwestern Lithuania would remain with Germany. Later, according to a secret protocol dated January 10, 1941, this territory was acquired by the USSR for 31.5 million Reichsmarks (7.5 million dollars). At the same time, the USSR managed to solve a number of important foreign policy tasks.
In the autumn of 1939, the USSR concluded treaties of friendship and mutual assistance with the Baltic states. On their basis, garrisons of Soviet troops were placed on the territory of these states. The purpose of this Soviet foreign policy action was to ensure the security of the Baltic states, as well as to prevent attempts to draw them into the war. Under an agreement dated October 10, 1939, the USSR transferred to Lithuania the city of Vilna and the Vilna region, which belonged to Belarus.
In the conditions of the aggravated military-political situation in Europe, the urgent task for the USSR was to ensure the security of the northwestern approaches to Leningrad, the largest industrial center of the country. Finland, which occupied a pro-German position, refused Soviet proposals to lease the port of Hanko to the USSR for 30 years to set up a military base, transfer part of the Karelian Isthmus, part of the Rybachy Peninsula and several islands in the eastern part of the Gulf of Finland - a total of 2761 km2 in exchange for 5529 km2 of the Soviet territories in East Karelia. In response to Finland's refusal, the USSR declared war on November 30, 1939, which lasted until March 12, 1940. Britain, France, the USA, Sweden, Norway, and Italy provided military assistance to Finland. On December 14, 1939, the Council of the League of Nations adopted a resolution excluding the USSR from its ranks. Under the peace treaty of March 12, 1940, Finland agreed to move its border with the USSR. The USSR undertook to withdraw its troops from the Petsamo region, which Finland voluntarily ceded to them under the 1920 treaty. The new border was extremely beneficial for the USSR not only from a political (security of Leningrad), but also from an economic point of view: 8 large pulp and paper enterprises ended up on Soviet territory , HPP Rauhala, railway along Ladoga.
The provision of a German loan to the USSR in the amount of 200 million marks (at 4.5% per annum) allowed the USSR to strengthen the country's defense capability, because what was supplied was either just weapons (ship weapons, samples of heavy artillery, tanks, aircraft, as well as important licenses ), or what weapons are made on (lathes, large hydraulic presses, etc., machinery, installations for producing liquid fuel from coal, equipment for other types of industry, etc.).
By April 1940, the so-called "strange war" was over. The German army, having accumulated significant human and military-technical forces, switched to an all-out offensive in Western Europe. On April 5, Germany invaded Denmark; a few hours later, the Danish government capitulated. On April 9, they captured Oslo, but Norway resisted for about 2 months. By May 10, 1940, Germany had already captured Belgium, Holland and Luxembourg. France was next. As a result of Operation Gelb, France was defeated, resisted for only 44 days. On June 22, the Petain government signed a surrender, according to which most of the territory of France was occupied.
The quick victory of Germany over France significantly changed the balance of power in Europe, which required the Soviet leadership to adjust its foreign policy. Calculations for the mutual attrition of opponents on the Western Front did not materialize. In connection with the expansion of German influence in Europe, there was a real danger of blocking certain circles of the Baltic countries with Germany. In June 1940, the USSR accused Lithuania of anti-Soviet actions, demanding a change of government and agreeing to the deployment of additional military units in Lithuania. On June 14 such consent was received from Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. The measures taken by Moscow decisively influenced the further course of events in this regard: the People's Seimas of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia (State Duma) on July 21-24, 1940 adopted a declaration on the proclamation of Soviet power in their countries, entry into the USSR. In August 1940, the session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, by its decision, accepted Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia into the USSR.
In the summer of 1920, at the request of the USSR, Romania transferred Bessarabia to it, which was annexed to Moldova by the ASSRS (1929 - 1940 Tiraspol). Thus, the USSR found itself in close proximity to the oil regions of Romania, the exploitation of which served the Reich as "an indispensable prerequisite for the successful conduct of the war." Hitler retaliated by making an agreement with the Fascist government of General Antonescu to transfer German troops to Romania. The tension between the USSR and Germany escalated even more with the signing on September 27, 1940 in Berlin of a pact between Germany, Italy and Japan on the actual division of the world. The trip of V.M. Molotov to Berlin on November 12-13, 1940 and his negotiations with Hitler and Ribbentrop did not lead to an improvement in the situation. An important achievement of the foreign policy of the USSR was the conclusion of the Neutrality Treaty with Turkey (March 1941) and Japan (April 1941).
At the same time, until the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, economic and trade relations were intensively developing between the two countries. According to Goebbels, Hitler assessed these agreements as a specifically Stalinist policy, calculated on the economic dependence of the Reich on the supply of industrial raw materials, which Germany could be deprived of at the right time. These are agricultural goods, oil products, manganese and chromium ores, rare metals, etc. The USSR received from German firms industrial products and armaments in the amount of 462.3 million marks. These are machine tools, high-strength steel, technical equipment, military equipment. At the same time, extremely scarce raw materials were flowing into Germany from the United States or through branches of American corporations in third countries. Moreover, deliveries of American oil and petroleum products were carried out until 1944. 249 US monopolies traded with Germany throughout the war.
The foreign policy of the USSR during the Second World War
The foreign policy of the Soviet Union was one of the factors of victory in the Great Patriotic War. Its main task was to create the best conditions in the international arena for defeating the enemy. The main goal also identified specific tasks:
1. Strive for the "bourgeois" states that were at war with Germany and Italy to become allies of the USSR.
2. To prevent the threat of an attack by Japan and drawing neutral states into the war on the side of the fascist aggressors.
3. To promote the liberation from the fascist yoke, the restoration of sovereignty, the democratic development of the countries occupied by the aggressors.
4. Strive for the complete elimination of fascist regimes and the conclusion of a peace that excludes the possibility of a repetition of aggression.
The threat of enslavement imperiously demanded the unification of the efforts of all countries that fought against fascism. This determined the emergence of an anti-Hitler coalition of three great powers - the USSR, the USA and England. About 50 countries joined them during the course of the war, including some of Germany's former allies. The international legal registration of the coalition took place in several stages. The steps of its creation were the signing in Moscow on July 12, 1941 of the “Agreement between the governments of the USSR and Great Britain on joint actions in the war against Germany”, the conclusion of similar agreements between the USSR and the emigrant governments of Czechoslovakia and Poland, the exchange of notes on August 2 between the USSR and the USA on the extension of year of the Soviet-American trade agreement and economic assistance from the United States to the Soviet Union.
An important stage in the formation and strengthening of the anti-Hitler coalition was the Moscow Conference of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the three powers (September 29 - October 1, 1941), at which the United States and Britain pledged from October 1, 1941 to June 30, 1942 to supply us with 400 aircraft, 500 tanks, 200 anti-tank rifles, etc. The USSR was granted an interest-free loan in the amount of 1 billion dollars. However, lend-lease deliveries were carried out during this period slowly and in small quantities. To strengthen the alliance with Britain and the USA, on September 24, the USSR joined the "Atlantic Charter", signed on August 14, 1941 at a meeting between W. Churchill and F. Roosevelt. For the USSR, this was not an easy decision. In this document, the United States and Britain declared that they did not seek territorial acquisitions in this war and would respect the right of peoples to choose their own form of government. The legitimacy of the borders that existed before the outbreak of World War II was emphasized. The Allies did not consider the USSR as a real force on the world stage, and therefore there was not a word about it or the Soviet-German front in the text of the document. In essence, their charter was of a separate nature, expressing the claims of the two powers to maintain world domination. The USSR expressed in a special declaration its agreement with the basic principles of the charter, emphasizing that their practical implementation should be consistent with the circumstances ...
On December 7, 1941, Japan attacked the US naval base at Pearl Harbor, located in the Hawaiian Islands, without declaring war. On December 8, the United States declared war on Japan. England did the same. On December 11, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States. The World War II zone expanded significantly. On January 1, 1942, in Washington, 26 states of the anti-fascist coalition, including the USSR, the USA, Britain and China, signed a declaration under which they pledged to use all their military and economic resources to fight against the fascist bloc. These countries became known as the "United Nations".
On May 26, 1942, an agreement was signed between England and the USSR on an alliance in war and post-war cooperation. In June 1942, the US and the USSR signed an agreement "On the principles applicable to mutual assistance and the conduct of war against aggression." However, our allies were in no hurry to open a second front. During the London talks in May 1942, Churchill handed Molotov a note to Stalin stating: "We do not bind ourselves to act and cannot make any promise." Churchill motivated his refusal by the lack of sufficient funds and forces. But in reality, political considerations played a major role. The British Minister of Aviation Industry M. Brabazon bluntly stated that "the best outcome of the struggle on the Eastern Front would be the mutual exhaustion of Germany and the USSR, as a result of which England could take a dominant position in Europe." The infamous statement of the future US President G. Truman echoed this thesis: “If we see that Germany is winning, then we should help Russia, and if Russia wins, we should help Germany, and thus let them kill like as much as possible." Thus, the calculations for the future leadership in the world of maritime powers were already based on the fight against fascism in World War II.
On June 12, 1942, Anglo-Soviet and Soviet-American communiqués were published stating that "complete agreement was reached on the urgent tasks of creating a second front in Europe in 1942." However, not only 1942, but also 1943 passed, and the second front in Western Europe was never opened. In the meantime, Allied forces launched major amphibious operations in North Africa and later in Sicily and Italy. Churchill even suggested replacing the second front with a strike "in the soft underbelly of Europe" - a landing in the Balkans in order to bring Anglo-American troops into the countries of South-Eastern Europe before the Red Army, advancing from the east, approached, and thereby establish the dominance of the maritime powers in this region, which played an important geopolitical significance.
The victories of the Red Army near Moscow, Stalingrad and Kursk were of great international significance. They demonstrated to the whole world the increased power of the Soviet state. The heavy losses of Nazi Germany on the Soviet-German front sharply weakened both its armed forces and the German rear. The resistance movement intensified - Stalingrad became the beginning of a new stage of this movement in France, Belgium, Norway and other occupied countries. Anti-fascist forces also grew in Germany itself, disbelief in the possibility of victory more and more seized its population. Under the influence of the defeat of the Italian army on the Soviet front and the operations of the allies in the Mediterranean basin, Italy capitulated on September 3, 1943 and broke with Nazi Germany. Mussolini was overthrown. Soon allied troops landed in Italy. The Germans responded by occupying the northern and central parts of the country. The new Italian government declared war on Germany.
In connection with the decisive successes of the Red Army by the end of 1943, the essence of the problem of the second front also changed. Victory over Germany was already a foregone conclusion; it could be achieved by the forces of the USSR alone. The Anglo-American side was now directly interested in opening a second front in Western Europe. From October 19 to October 30, 1943, a conference of foreign ministers of the three states was held in Moscow. The conference adopted a "Declaration on the responsibility of the Nazis for the committed atrocities", and also prepared the conditions for a meeting of the heads of government of the USSR, the USA and England. This was also facilitated by the dissolution of the Communist International in May 1943. In an interview with a Reuters correspondent, I.V. Stalin pointed out that the dissolution of the Comintern exposed the lies about Moscow's intention to Bolshevize other states, that the Communist Parties were not acting in the interests of their own peoples, but on orders from outside. The dissolution of the Comintern was positively received by the leaders of the allies, primarily the United States. Relations between Moscow and other communist parties have changed; more emphasis was placed on bilateral contacts between the leadership of the CPSU (b), primarily I.V. Stalin and V.M. Molotov, with leaders of foreign communist parties.
On the eve of the Tehran meeting of allied leaders, US President F. Roosevelt said that "the United States must occupy Northwest Germany ... We must reach Berlin." From the point of view of the Americans, Churchill's Mediterranean strategy, which was supported by the US government until mid-1943, had exhausted itself. The second front in the West gave America the opportunity to "keep the Red Army out of the vital areas of the Ruhr and the Rhine, which an offensive from the Mediterranean would never achieve." The growing superiority of the Americans in manpower and technology forced Churchill to accept their plan.
The Tehran Conference, at which I. Stalin, F. Roosevelt and W. Churchill first met, was held from November 28 to December 1, 1943. The main issue of the conference was the question of opening a second front. Despite Churchill's attempts to put forward his "Balkan" option for discussion, the Anglo-American side was forced to set a deadline for the start of the Overlord plan - May 1944 (in fact, the landing began on June 6). At the conference, the Allies put forward projects for the dismemberment of Germany. At the insistence of the USSR, the question of the Anglo-American plans for the dismemberment of Germany was submitted for further study. The conference participants exchanged views on the issue of the borders of Poland, and the Soviet delegation proposed to accept the "Curzon line" as the eastern border, and the "line of the river" as the western border. Oder". Churchill agreed in principle with this proposal, hoping that he would be able to return the émigré "London government" to power in Poland. The conference adopted the "Three Powers Declaration on Iran". Soviet and British troops were brought into Iran in 1941 in order to prevent the Germans from violating the sovereignty of this neutral country. The declaration provided for the withdrawal of allied troops and the preservation of the independence and territorial integrity of Iran after the war. The question of war with Japan was also discussed. The USSR agreed to enter the war against Japan. However, no specific agreement has been reached. The first meeting of the Big Three was a success. Despite the presence of sharp disagreements on certain issues, the leaders of the three great powers were able to work out agreed solutions. The results of the Tehran Conference were a great success for Soviet foreign policy.
The help of the allies was of great importance for the USSR at the final stage of the war. It was a well-thought-out foreign policy strategy of Western countries from beginning to end, or, in the words of Western historians, "an act of calculated self-interest." Until 1943, inclusive, the assistance to the USSR was provided by the Americans in such a way as to prevent it from gaining a decisive advantage over Germany. The overall Lend-Lease supply plan was estimated at $11.3 billion. Although the total volume of industrial supplies amounted to 4% of the gross industrial production in the USSR during the war years, the volume of deliveries for individual types of weapons was significant. So, cars - about 70%. 14,450 aircraft were delivered (since 1942, the USSR produced 40,000 aircraft annually), 7,000 tanks (with 30,000 tanks produced annually), machine guns - 1.7% (of the production level of the USSR), shells - 0.6 %, pistols - 0.8%, mines - 0.1%. After the death of F. Roosevelt, on May 11, 1945, the new US President G. Truman issued a directive to stop supplies to the USSR for military operations in Europe, and in August an order to stop all supplies to the USSR from the moment the act of surrender of Japan was signed. The refusal of unconditional assistance to the USSR testified to a fundamental change in the position of the United States, while it should be noted that the USSR, returning debts under Lend-Lease, was obliged to pay 1.3 billion dollars (for 10 billion loans), while England paid only 472 million dollars for a loan of 30 billion dollars.
From February 4 to February 11, 1945, the Crimean Conference of the leaders of the three great powers was held in Yalta. At the conference, its participants solemnly proclaimed that the goal of the occupation and allied control of Germany was "the destruction of German militarism and Nazism and the creation of a guarantee that Germany will never again be able to disturb the peace." The agreements "On the zones of occupation of Germany and on the management of greater Berlin" and "On the control mechanism in Germany" were adopted. At the insistence of the USSR, the three occupation zones - Soviet, American and British - were joined by an occupation zone for French troops. Also, at the insistence of the Soviet side, the issue of German reparations was considered. Their total amount was about 20 billion dollars, of which the USSR claimed half. Roosevelt supported the Soviet position on this issue. The Polish question was acute at the conference. England and the USA linked their hopes of influencing Poland with the return of the exile government there. Stalin did not want this. Post-war relations with the USSR depended on the composition of the government in Poland. In response to W. Churchill's remark that Poland is "a matter of honor" for England, Stalin remarked that "for Russia this is a matter of both honor and security." The USSR managed to achieve the legal termination of the Polish government in exile. The conference determined the conditions for the USSR to enter the war against Japan two or three months after the end of the war in Europe. It was decided to convene a United Nations conference on 25 April 1945 in San Francisco to adopt the text of the UN Charter. The Crimean Conference adopted the "Declaration on a Liberated Europe" and the final document "Unity in the organization of peace, as well as in the conduct of war." Both documents outlined specific joint actions to destroy fascism and reorganize Europe on a democratic basis.
The Potsdam Conference (July 17 - August 2, 1945) summed up the joint actions of the USSR, the USA and England in World War II. The USSR delegation was headed by I.V. Stalin, USA - President G. Truman, Great Britain - first W. Churchill, and from July 29 the new Prime Minister C. Attlee. The main issue of the conference is the question of the future of Germany. In relation to it, the so-called "plan of 3 D" was adopted; demilitarization, denazification (liquidation of the Nazi party) and democratization of Germany. The issue of German reparations was settled. At the conference, the allies confirmed their consent to the transfer of the city of Konigsberg to the USSR with the surrounding areas and came to an agreement on the western border of Poland. The Soviet delegation confirmed in Potsdam the agreement concluded at Yalta on the entry of the USSR into the war against Japan within the agreed timeframe. The Council of Foreign Ministers (CMFA) was also established, to which the Allies entrusted the preparation of a peace settlement, primarily the drafting of peace treaties with Italy, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Finland. The Confederation confirmed the intention of the Allied Powers to bring Nazi criminals to justice.
Despite the agreed decisions, the Potsdam Conference showed that the maritime powers had their own program of action in Germany, which differed both from the Soviet proposals and from the obligations they assumed. During the days of the conference, the first experimental explosion of the atomic bomb was carried out in the United States, which the Americans soon used in Japan, barbarously destroying hundreds of thousands of people in the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki without any military necessity. This was an attempt at threatening political influence on the USSR, heralding the approach of the Cold War era.
The history of homeland. Edited by M.V. Zotova. - 2nd ed., corrected. and additional
M.: Publishing House of MGUP, 2001. 208 p. 1000 copies
The history of Russia, as well as the history of its successor, the USSR, is a continuous impenetrable myth, a huge heap of centuries-old lies.But, as they say, there is nothing secret that would not become obvious, the time has come for the Soviet myths to collapse.
Myth 1: Great Patriotic War
The greatest battle between Good and Evil in History is called "The Great Patriotic War of the Soviet People against the German-Fascist Invaders" and lasted 4 years, from June 22, 1941 to May 9, 1945.
Reality:
The Second World War - it is under this name that the rest of the world knows the great battle - began on September 1, 1939 with the attack of the Third Reich army on Poland and the Soviet attack on Poland that followed on September 17. And the Second World War ended on September 2, 1945 with the surrender of the Japanese Empire.
In many countries, local military conflicts within the framework of the Second World War have their own names, but nowhere, except for the Soviet Union, did the name PART of the war replace the name of the WHOLE war.
The reason that forced the Soviet leadership to create their own historiography on this subject was the fact that the Soviet Union de facto took part in the Second World War from September 17, 1939 on the side of the Third Reich, since it was on September 17, 1939 that the USSR, by prior agreement with Germany attacked Poland. The red-browns celebrated their joint victory in Brest.
That is why the calculation of the war from June 22, 1941 - the moment when the Soviet Union was forced to start fighting AGAINST the Third Reich, was fundamental for Soviet historiography.
The land war between the Soviet Union and the Third Reich in Eastern Europe is the largest, but still an episode, i.e. - one of a series of episodes, a global conflict that took place between the Allies, and later - the Anti-Hitler coalition, on the one hand, and the Axis countries, on the other hand.
Moreover, there is only one country on the planet that participated in the Second World War from its very beginning to the very end, that is, it rattled off the entire war from bell to bell. This country is the British Empire. (Although, if you remember, you can say that this is the Soviet Union, which started the war from Khalkhin Gol and Spain).
Myth 2: The communists have always been against the fascists
The Soviet Ideology was the principal opponent of Fascism, and the Soviet Union was the principal enemy of Fascist Germany. All fascist accomplices are our enemies, all collaborators are traitors.
Reality:
Soviet ideology has become a principled opponent of Fascism mainly since 1938, and fully-fledged only since 1941. The propaganda of this time 1933-1939 depicts the German regime and life in Germany in general in much the same way as the social structure and life in the USA, France or the British Empire. That is, bourgeois forces rule in this country, which are fundamentally opposed to true people's power - the power of workers and peasants.
Now this fact seems surprising, but at first fascism (if we are talking about German fascism, then the more correct term is "Nazism", because in the narrow sense the concept of "fascism" applies only to the Italian fascist party) did not seem evil to anyone. The entire history of the global struggle against fascism is a history of gradual insights and a gradual transition to anti-fascism of countries, peoples and individual groups. Even the British Empire, which boasts the most principled and consistent anti-fascist stance, has long practiced appeasement tactics.
On September 30, 1938, in Munich, Prime Minister of the British Empire Neville Chamberlain and French Prime Minister Edouard Daladier signed an agreement with Reich Chancellor of the Third Reich Adolf Hitler and Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini, according to which Germany's right to occupy part of Czechoslovakia was de facto recognized. This fact, called the "Munich Pact", is considered a shameful stain on the reputation of Britain and France, who at that moment were trying to negotiate with Hitler and not bring matters to a conflict.
As for the Soviet Union, its cooperation with Germany from 1922 to 1939 was extremely extensive. Before the Nazi Party came to power in the USSR, Germany was considered as the closest candidate for a socialist revolution, and after that, as a strategic ally in the fight against Western capitalism. The USSR and Germany traded a lot, exchanged technologies, actively cooperated in the military (and not only military) sphere. In the 1920s and 1930s alone, there were at least three major centers for training German military personnel and developing military technologies in the USSR, which certainly violated the terms of the Versailles Peace Treaty.
In many ways, the foundations of the iron machine of the Wehrmacht, which captured most of Europe and collapsed on the USSR itself on June 22, 1941, were laid in the USSR.
In accordance with the secret protocol to the non-aggression pact between the Third Reich and the USSR, better known as Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, after the outbreak of World War II, the USSR de facto entered the war on the side of the Third Reich, invading Poland on September 17, 1939. On September 22, 1939, a joint parade of the Wehrmacht and the Red Army was held in Brest, dedicated to the signing of the demarcation line agreement.
In the USSR, everyone knew that Brest was a hero-fortress, but not everyone knew why all the other settlements that distinguished themselves in the first days of the war were called “Hero-Cities”, and only Brest was called “Hero-Fortress”. The answer is rather banal: the inhabitants of Brest did not show themselves in any way during the attack of the Third Reich on the USSR. They did not at all consider themselves citizens of the country that had just been attacked, because two years ago they were citizens of Poland, which the USSR shared with the Third Reich, having jointly celebrated this event with a solemn parade. Resistance to the German attack was provided by a military garrison based near Brest - in the old fortress. Naturally, the garrison, consisting entirely of Soviet troops who arrived here quite recently. That is why the hero is only a fortress, not a city. By the way, before that, in 1939, the Poles defended the Brest Fortress from the Nazi troops, and, we must give them their due, they defended with dignity!
Also, few people know about the heroic defense of some cities, for example, Lvov, from the Nazi invaders in September 1939. The defense of Lviv did not differ in bloodiness, but was extremely dramatic - the Germans entered the outskirts of the city, as well as later on the outskirts of Moscow, on September 12, and for ten days they were driven out of there by Polish troops, until the Red Army approached from the other side and offered the garrison surrender the city. Only on June 22, 1941, with the attack of the Third Reich on the USSR, does the "Eternal Fundamental Enmity of the Workers and Peasants with the Nazis" begin, which we know so well from Soviet textbooks.
As Orwell wrote about this, Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
Myth 3: The Soviet people in a single impulse harrowed the Fatherland
The Soviet people fought in unison against the Nazi Invaders, some in the ranks of the Red Army, some in the ranks of the partisans, and some simply harmed the little things. Only traitors and other collaborators did not fight.
Reality:
Let's start with the fact that a significant part of the people who later were part of the "Soviet people" at that time, at least, did not identify themselves with it. I have already written above about the Brest Fortress, but most people do not imagine the scale of the phenomenon.
As a result of the Polish campaign of the Red Army in 1939, the Soviet Union occupied a territory of almost 200 thousand square kilometers, which included Western Ukraine, Western Belarus, Eastern Poland and Southwestern Lithuania. In total, 13 million people lived in this territory.
In a matter of months, the Soviet authorities organized a "people's will" in this territory and annexed them to the corresponding Soviet republics. In June-July 1940, the Red Army actually occupied Bessarabia and Western Bukovina without a fight - a territory of 50 thousand square kilometers (from August 2, 1940 became the Moldavian SSR), where 3 million 776 thousand people lived.
In June 1940, the USSR occupies Estonia, Latvia and part of Lithuania, which, after the "elections" were held on July 21-22, turned into the corresponding Soviet republics.
In total, the territories occupied by the USSR by that moment in terms of area and population were approximately equal to, for example, a country like Italy. At the same time, in the occupied territories, the Soviet government carries out mass repressions, cleaning them from unreliable and class-alien elements to the workers and peasants. These elements were arrested without trial, imprisoned, exiled to Siberia, and in extreme situations they were shot. The most famous are the deportation operations of the inhabitants of the Baltic States, namely the operation of 1940, during which up to 50,000 people were evicted. As well as Operation Surf in 1949, during which more than 100,000 were evicted. Do not forget about the mass executions of the Polish military in the Katyn forest, in the Starobelsky camp, in the Ostashkovsky camp and other places, a total of 22,000 people.
It is easy to imagine that the population of all these territories did not burn with the desire to defend the USSR from anyone, even from a bald devil. But even in that part of the Soviet Union that was Soviet until 1939, not everyone supported Soviet power, to put it mildly. Nationalist sentiments were strong in Belarus and Ukraine, because within the Soviet Union, just as earlier within the Russian Empire, both nations were actually offered to forget their culture, completely replacing it with Russian. In addition, the memory of the famine of 1933 was still too fresh in Ukraine. Some 8 years separate the year 1941 from the Holodomor - this is as much as it separates us from the Orange Revolution, and 5 years more than separates us from the departure of Yeltsin, that is, in 1941. ALL the adult population of Ukraine remembered well - not from stories , and from my own experience - the greatest tragedy that has befallen this country in its entire history. Therefore, the words “let there be Germans, if only there were no advice - EVERYTHING WILL NOT BE WORSE” for Ukrainians not only sounded psychologically convincing, but, as we see now, are an objective truth.
Flawed power generates not only a flawed life, but also massive hatred for such a country.
The beginning of the Great Patriotic War is a surrealistic action, during which the Red Army mostly ... does not even retreat, but rather runs, drapes, crumbles into dust. Later, the Germans will remember June-July 1941 with the words "There is no enemy ahead, and there is no rear behind", because the convoy does not keep up with German units, rapidly advancing deep into Soviet territory and meeting no resistance.
Soviet soldiers do not want to fight, do not understand what they are fighting for, and desert en masse. Cases of rare heroism these days look very unrealistic and surreal, while the exodus of Red Army soldiers has become rampant.
Konstantin Simonov's book "100 Days of War", dedicated to the chaos of the first days of the Great Patriotic War, was never published in the USSR, it was published only in 1982 in a heavily revised form under the title "Different days of the war". In it, the author reports that only with the advent of detachments and penal battalions, discipline was established in the troops and, finally, a “united impulse” was achieved, during which the Soviet people ... and so on.
Myth 4: German = Fascist
All Germans during the war were fascists, every German soldier was an SS man.
Reality:
This is not the biggest problem with the war, but my sense of justice requires me to put in a good word for the Germans. They did not deserve the place in history they occupy today. Of all the great history and grandiose scale of the thousand-year-old culture that gave us the modern structure of cities and the principles of trade, many crafts and religious reformation, a significant part of classical music and philosophy, and much, much more, we remember today "Hyunde hoch" and "Hitler - kaput ".
Germany after the collapse of the "Second Reich" was the ruins of a huge state with the richest cultural, and, importantly, military traditions. The Wehrmacht was originally created as an organization devoid of any political color whatsoever, the Wehrmacht's opponents, the "assault squads", which were also called "stormtroopers" or "brownshirts", had such a color. After the Night of the Long Knives, the attack aircraft, like other German paramilitary organizations, became part of the Wehrmacht, but they did not play leading roles there. Almost the entire leadership of the Wehrmacht remained out of politics until 1939, and a significant part of the leadership remained non-partisan until July 20, 1944, when, after the famous assassination attempt on Hitler, organized by high-ranking military opponents of Nazism, Hitler actually forced all the generals to join the party under threat of reprisal.
According to a court verdict for a conspiracy on July 20, one field marshal, 19 generals, 26 colonels, 2 ambassadors, 7 diplomats of another level, 1 minister, 3 secretaries of state and the chief of the criminal police of the Reich were shot. In total, 200 people were sentenced and about 5,000 without trial, about 7,000 more were arrested and imprisoned in concentration camps. Among others, Admiral Canaris (hanged in a steel collar) and Rommel (left in the office with a loaded pistol, committed suicide) died.
Until the very end of the war, there were almost no members of the NSDAP among the rank and file military of the Wehrmacht: they were more common among officers, and their number did not exceed 5% of the total number of the Wehrmacht.
"Party" conscripts and volunteers tried to get into the SS troops, which, on the one hand, were considered more privileged, on the other hand, were much more politicized and performed almost all the tasks of cleaning up the civilian population (executions of commissars, Jews, etc.). But even the SS troops often resisted particularly cannibalistic party orders.
For ordinary Germans, the coming to power of the Nazis was a spontaneous phenomenon: the same as the coming to power in Russia of a small and unpopular Bolshevik party. The desire of the Germans to cleanse themselves of the Nazi past after the defeat in the war: denazification, the prohibition of nationalist political forces, etc., certainly deserves respect, and serves as an example for other nations that have gone through similar stages in their history.
Myth 5: Nazi Germany was defeated by the Soviet Union
Thanks to the efforts of the Soviet Union alone, the war against fascism was won.
Reality:
It is, generally speaking, incorrect to talk about the victory of the COUNTRY over the COUNTRY in a global military conflict between large coalitions of states. It is incorrect not only terminologically, but also purely humanly. Dividing such an orange as "victory" between those who contributed "more" and those who, from our point of view, made a "less" contribution, is simply ugly. All soldiers of the coalition are comrades-in-arms, and the contribution of each was invaluable. Soldiers died the same way, on land, at sea and in the air, and their victory was, as the famous song sang, "one for all."
As I already wrote in the analysis of Myth No. 1, the only country that plowed the entire war from bell to bell is the British Empire. Today, most people think of the island of the same name when they think of the word "Britain", but in 1939 Britain was the largest of all the nations that ever existed in the history of mankind, occupied a quarter of the earth's land mass, and was home to 480 million people, almost a quarter of the entire population of the Earth. The British Empire included Britain proper, as well as Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, New Guinea, Canada, India (which then included modern India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Burma and Sri Lanka), Guyana or British Guiana, about a quarter The African continent, namely, a vertical strip from Egypt to South Africa, plus the territories of the central Atlantic coast and a significant part of the Middle East: modern Israel, Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Yemen and the United Arab Emirates.
The sun never truly set on the British Empire. The economic and military power of this state significantly exceeded the forces of the Third Reich. However, the fact that it was "scattered" around the world, and the main hostilities took place in Europe, significantly worsened the ability of the British to fight Germany wholly located in Europe. After the German blitzkrieg in Poland, and then in the Benelux countries and France, a long positional war begins between the Germans and the British, which takes place mainly at sea and is called the "Battle of the Atlantic". This battle lasted almost the entire 6 years of the war and cost the lives of approximately 100,000 people, turning the Atlantic Ocean into one of the main theaters of operations.
Other significant theaters of operations are North Africa, where German forces fought British military forces on land. China and southeast Asia, where the Japanese Empire fought a long list of countries, most of which it conquered. Then - the Pacific Ocean, where the Empire of Japan and the United States waged a naval war in 1941-1945, and, of course, the "Eastern Front" - a land theater of military operations in Eastern Europe, where the Third Reich and the USSR fought. The last theater was the most significant in terms of the volume of military efforts and the number of losses, and the most important for all, without exception, the allies. Therefore, starting from June 22, 1941, the United States included the USSR in the Lend-Lease program - the transfer of weapons, materials and supplies to the belligerent side "in debt", according to which they had already supplied weapons to Britain. In total, goods worth 11 billion dollars or 140 billion in modern prices, about 17 and a half million tons of various cargoes, were delivered to the USSR under Lend-Lease. It was weapons - small arms, tanks, explosives, ammunition, as well as aircraft, locomotives, cars, ships, machinery and equipment, food, non-ferrous and ferrous metals, clothing, materials, chemicals, and so on.
In a number of areas, lend-lease accounted for a significant proportion of the total volume of goods used in the USSR during the war: for example, about a third of all explosives used in the USSR in 1941-1945, about 40% of copper and more than 50 % aluminium, cobalt, tin, wool, railway rails, etc. 2.5 times more locomotives were supplied to the USSR under Lend-Lease than were produced during the war years by Soviet industry. Most of the Katyushas were on Studebaker chassis, and almost all the canned meat that got to the front was American-made.
By the way, the debt of the USSR for Lend-Lease has not yet been repaid, unlike all other participating countries!
As for the official Soviet propaganda, it preferred to downplay the importance of American aid in every possible way, if not to completely hush it up. In March 1943, the American ambassador in Moscow, without hiding his offense, allowed himself an undiplomatic statement: “The Russian authorities, apparently, want to hide the fact that they receive help from outside. Obviously, they want to assure their people that the Red Army is fighting alone in this war. And during the Yalta Conference in 1945, Stalin was forced to admit that Lend-Lease was Roosevelt's wonderful and most fruitful contribution to the creation of the anti-Hitler coalition.
Citizens of Western countries wholeheartedly tried to use supplies to the USSR to support the Soviet soldiers, at least with some pleasant trifle, a gift from the heart. Soviet propaganda, on the other hand, rudely ridiculed this, it tried to prevent friendship and mutual understanding between people in private - only through the state and only in the way the state decides. As in prison - only in the presence of the warden.
If it were not for the countries of the West, then the Red Army would have entered Berlin on horseback, if it had entered at all (before Lend-Lease deliveries, the entire Red Army was horse-drawn). However, the official point of view of the USSR on lend-lease was expressed in the following lines: “The Soviet Union was left to itself, did not receive help from the West, in particular from the United States, precisely at the time that was the most desperate for it, when the issue was being resolved, to be or not to be the Soviet state! Political and civic savagery has always been our hallmark.
It is not surprising that when the American film "The Unknown War" went to the cinemas of the country in the 80s, many were shocked: ace Pokryshkin told how he flew the American fighter Airacobra throughout the war; northern caravans with cargoes of aid and much more, which turned everything upside down, and therefore was not perceived - "this cannot be", "we know the truth from school." Is it true?
Phrases like "we would have won without it" or "they would have lost if it weren't for us" sin with fantastic dilettantism. But since the conversation is often and purposefully diverted in this direction, I must express my private opinion: “From my point of view, without six years of heroic efforts by the British in the Battle of the Atlantic, without four years of colossal infusions of American money into Lend-Lease, which saved hundreds of thousands of Soviet lives citizens, without many other small and medium-sized victims and pockets of resistance from other countries and peoples, the Soviet Union had too illusory chances to win the war against the Third Reich. With a high degree of probability, the Soviet Union would have lost it».
Since without the assistance of England and the USA the USSR could not have waged war against Germany, the statements of Soviet propaganda about the economic victory of socialism in the Great Patriotic War and the ability of the USSR to defeat Germany on its own are nothing more than a myth. Unlike Germany, in the USSR, the goal of creating an autarkic economy capable of providing the army in wartime with everything necessary for waging a modern war, which was outlined as early as the 1930s, was not achieved.
Hitler and his advisers miscalculated not so much in determining the military and economic power of the USSR, but in assessing the ability of the Soviet economic and political system to function in the face of a severe military defeat, as well as the ability of the Soviet economy to effectively and quickly use Western supplies, and Great Britain and the United States to implement such supplies in the required quantity and in a timely manner.
“Now it is easy to say that Lend-Lease meant nothing. It ceased to be of great importance much later. But in the fall of 1941, we lost everything, and if it weren’t for Lend-Lease, not for weapons, food, warm clothes for the army and other supplies, it’s still a question how things would have turned out ”(Berezhkov V.M.,“ How I Became a Translator Stalin", M., 1993. p. 337).
And by the way, it is highly likely that after the defeat of the Soviet Union, the Allies would have won the war anyway - the power of the British Empire and the wealth of the United States would still have done their job.
In Europe, at this moment, May 8 is also celebrated there, with the exception of the USSR, which chose a separate date for its own war. To justify this fact, many Soviet historians shake their lips with far-fetched arguments, but the truth is extremely simple - for many decades we have not bothered to celebrate Victory Day together with the whole world.
Even former enemies have long become friends, but only we, the last of Soviet propaganda, have still not been able to reconcile ... no, not with enemies, but with our former allies, who helped us a lot in difficult times and fought side by side together with us against a common enemy. We, like rednecks, have set ourselves apart and are celebrating some kind of our own separate war, perverted by propaganda myths, outright lies and patriotic pathos. In it, we are GREAT heroes who won a GREAT victory in a GREAT war, but never received it.
Every year we are smeared on the lips with this victory from the podium of the mausoleum by those who appropriated it to themselves, and we enthusiastically smack our lips - we are heroes!
Words by B.N. Yeltsin, who spoke on Poklonnaya Hill in the year of the 50th anniversary of the Victory: “There are still unwritten and torn pages in the history of the war. Many of them have not been completed to this day.”
On September 1, 1939, fascist Germany, dreaming of world domination and revenge for the defeat in the First World War, unleashed hostilities against Poland. Thus began the Second World War - the largest military clash of our century.
On the eve of these events, the USSR and Germany signed non-aggression and friendship treaties. There were also secret protocols that dealt with the division of spheres of influence between the two states, the contents of which became public knowledge only four decades later.
The signed documents promised benefits to both parties. Germany secured its eastern borders and could safely conduct military operations in the West, while the Soviet Union, relatively safely for its western borders, could concentrate its military power in the East.
Having divided spheres of influence in Europe with Germany, the USSR concluded agreements with the Baltic states, on whose territory the Red Army troops were soon introduced. Together with Western Ukraine, Western Belarus and Bessarabia, these lands soon became part of the Soviet Union.
As a result of hostilities with Finland, which took place from November 30, 1939 to March 1940, the Karelian Isthmus with the city of Vyborg and the northern coast of Ladoga went to the USSR. The League of Nations, defining these actions as aggression, expelled the Soviet Union from its ranks.
A short military clash with Finland revealed serious miscalculations in the organization of the USSR Armed Forces, in the level of equipment available to them, as well as in the training of command personnel. As a result of mass repressions, many positions among the officers were occupied by specialists who did not have the necessary training.
Measures to strengthen the defense capability of the Soviet state
In March 1939, the 18th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks adopted the fourth five-year plan, which outlined grandiose, difficult-to-implement rates of economic growth. The main attention in the plan was paid to the development of heavy engineering, the defense, metallurgical and chemical industries, the increase in industrial production in the Urals and Siberia. Expenses for the production of weapons and other defense products increased sharply.
An even stricter labor discipline was introduced at industrial enterprises. Being late for work by more than 20 minutes threatened with criminal punishment. A seven-day work week was introduced throughout the country.
The military and political leadership of the country did not do everything possible in the strategic plan. The experience of military operations was insufficiently analyzed, many talented commanders of the highest rank and major military theorists were repressed. In the military environment of I.V. Stalin, the opinion prevailed that the coming war for the USSR would be only offensive in nature, military operations would only take place on foreign soil.
During this period, scientists developed new types of weapons, which were soon to enter the Red Army. However, by the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, this process was not completed. Many samples of new equipment and weapons lacked spare parts, and the personnel of the armed forces had not yet mastered the new types of weapons to the proper extent.
The beginning of the Great Patriotic War
In the spring of 1940, the German military command developed a plan for attacking the USSR: the Reich army was supposed to defeat the Red Army with lightning strikes from tank groups in the North (Leningrad-Karelia), in the center (Minsk-Moscow) and in the South (Ukraine-Caucasus-Lower Volga). before the onset of winter.
By the spring of 1941, a military grouping of more than 5.5 million people and a huge amount of military equipment, unprecedented in scale, was pulled up to the western borders of the Soviet Union.
The Soviet Union knew about the desire of German fascism to start hostilities thanks to intelligence work. During 1940 - early 1941, the country's government received convincing information about the plans of a potential enemy. However, the leadership headed by I. V. Stalin did not take these reports seriously, until the last moment they believed that Germany could not wage war in the west and east at the same time.
Only at about midnight on June 21, 1941, People's Commissar of Defense S.K. Timoshenko and Chief of the General Staff G.K. Zhukov gave the order to bring the troops of the western military districts to full combat readiness. However, the directive came to some military units already at the moment when the bombardment began. Only the Baltic Fleet was put on full combat readiness, meeting the aggressor with a worthy rebuff.
guerrilla war
During the Great Patriotic War, a nationwide partisan struggle unfolded. Gradually, fighters and commanders from the encircled units and formations poured into the partisan detachments. In the spring of 1942, the Central Headquarters of the partisan movement was established in Moscow. With the expansion of offensive operations of the Red Army, joint combat operations of partisans and regular military units were carried out more and more actively.
As a result of the well-executed operation "rail war", partisan formations, putting the railroads out of action, disrupted the movement of enemy formations, and inflicted significant material damage on the enemy.
By the beginning of 1944, a large number of partisan detachments joined the army formations. The leaders of the partisan detachments S. A. Kovpak, A. F. Fedorov were twice awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.
Underground groups were active together with the partisans. They organized sabotage, carried out explanatory work among the inhabitants of the occupied regions. Numerous information about the deployment of enemy military formations, thanks to the actions of the underground, became the property of army intelligence.
The heroic work of the rear
Despite the sudden invasion of the enemy, thanks to the clear organization and heroism of millions of citizens of the country, a significant number of industrial enterprises were evacuated to the East in a short time. The main industrial production was concentrated in the Center and in the Urals. There was a victory there.
It took just a few months to not only start producing defense products in new areas, but also to achieve high labor productivity. By 1943, Soviet military production in terms of quantity and quality significantly surpassed the German one. A large-scale serial production of T-34 medium tanks, heavy KV tanks, IL-2 attack aircraft and other military equipment was launched.
These successes were achieved by the selfless labor of workers and peasants, most of whom were women, old people and teenagers.
High was the patriotic spirit of the people who believed in victory.
Liberation of the territory of the USSR and Eastern Europe from fascism (1944-1945)
In January 1944, as a result of the successful operation of the Leningrad, Volkhov and 2nd Baltic fronts, the blockade of Leningrad was lifted. In the winter of 1944, Right-bank Ukraine was liberated by the efforts of three Ukrainian fronts, and by the end of spring, the western border of the USSR was completely restored.
Under such conditions, at the beginning of the summer of 1944, a second front was opened in Europe.
The Headquarters of the Supreme High Command developed a grandiose in scale and tactically successful plan for the complete liberation of Soviet territory and the entry of the Red Army troops into Eastern Europe in order to liberate it from fascist enslavement. This was preceded by one of the major offensive operations - Belorussian, which received the code name "Bagration".
As a result of the offensive, the Soviet Army reached the outskirts of Warsaw and stopped on the right bank of the Vistula. At this time, a popular uprising broke out in Warsaw, brutally suppressed by the Nazis.
In September-October 1944, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia were liberated. The partisan formations of these states took an active part in the hostilities of the Soviet troops, which then formed the basis of their national armed forces.
Fierce battles flared up for the liberation of the lands of Hungary, where there was a large grouping of fascist troops, especially in the area of Lake Balaton. For two months, Soviet troops besieged Budapest, the garrison of which capitulated only in February 1945. Only by mid-April 1945 was the territory of Hungary completely liberated.
Under the sign of the victories of the Soviet Army, from February 4 to 11, a conference of the leaders of the USSR, the USA and England was held in Yalta, at which questions of the post-war reorganization of the world were discussed. Among them, the establishment of the borders of Poland, the recognition of the demands of the USSR for reparations, the question of the entry of the USSR into the war against Japan, the consent of the Allied Powers to the annexation of the Kuril Islands and South Sakhalin to the USSR.
April 16 - May 2 - Berlin operation - the last major battle of the Great Patriotic War. It went through several stages:
- the capture of the Seelow Heights;
-fighting on the outskirts of Berlin;
-storming of the central, most fortified part of the city.
On the night of May 9, in the Berlin suburb of Karlshorst, the Act of unconditional surrender of Germany was signed.
July 17 - August 2 - Potsdam Conference of Heads of State - members of the anti-Hitler coalition. The main question is the fate of post-war Germany. Control- was created. ny council - a joint body of the USSR, the USA, Great Britain and France for the exercise of supreme power in Germany for the period of its occupation. He paid special attention to the issues of the Polish-German border. Germany was subject to complete demilitarization, and the activities of the Social Nazi Party were prohibited. Stalin confirmed the readiness of the USSR to take part in the war against Japan.
The President of the United States, having received positive results from nuclear weapons tests by the beginning of the conference, began to put pressure on the Soviet Union. Accelerated work on the creation of atomic weapons in the USSR.
On August 6 and 9, the US bombed two Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which were of no strategic importance. The act was of a warning and threatening nature, primarily for our state.
On the night of August 9, 1945, the Soviet Union began military operations against Japan. Three fronts were formed: the Trans-Baikal and two Far Eastern ones. Together with the Pacific Fleet and the Amur Military Flotilla, the elite Japanese Kwantung Army was defeated and North China, North Korea, South Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands were liberated.
On September 2, 1945, the Second World War ended with the signing of the Japanese Surrender Act on the USS Missouri.
Results of the Great Patriotic War
Of the 50 million human lives claimed by the Second World War, about 30 million fell to the share of the Soviet Union. Huge and material losses of our state.
All the forces of the country were thrown to achieve victory. Significant economic assistance was provided by countries participating in the anti-Hitler coalition.
During the Great Patriotic War, a new galaxy of commanders was born. It was rightfully headed by four times Hero of the Soviet Union, Deputy Supreme Commander-in-Chief Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov, twice awarded the Order of Victory.
Among the famous commanders of the Great Patriotic War, K. K. Rokossovsky, A. M. Vasilevsky, I. S. Konev and other talented military leaders who had to bear responsibility for the wrong strategic decisions made by the political leadership of the country and personally by I. V. Stalin, especially in the first, most difficult period of the Great Patriotic War.