So, we have rejected sources that changed positions on key issues several times, and how many of us have come to the conclusion that the official Soviet version of the events of the initial stage of the war is not just false, but harmful, because it was intentionally falsified. The subsequent versions turned out to be diametrically opposed: from the total incapability of the troops, for they were tired of tyranny, to the version that the troops had high standards, but they were preparing exclusively for an offensive war.
The first version is true for the later stages of the war, when it became already known about the terrible human losses, about the lost territories and when the life of all the inhabitants of the scoop, except for a small governing stratum, became simply terrible. Then there were doubts about the wisdom of the party and government and about where they lead the country. It is not surprising that in the occupied territories, in many cases, people began to live better. A little later, wonderful military leaders like Zhukov offered to take the families of the military hostage. This proposal came from this figure when he arrived in Leningrad to stabilize the situation. This did not add to the desire to fight. But all such things were a little later. And the day before, the situation in the troops was somewhat different: "armor is strong and our tanks are fast!".
The second version says that the troops were imprisoned solely for offensive operations and were not prepared for defense at all, and Hitler played for the lead. This version really came closest to what it really was, but it does not fully explain the scale of the subsequent catastrophe.
It is important to understand that there really was no question of defense and the Soviet description of the first hours of the war gives a few blurred episodes of the fact that some commanders, at their own peril and risk, tried to transfer the troops entrusted to them, even in some defense regime. This applies to the fleet commander, who brought the naval bases entrusted to him to combat readiness and it was the fleet forces who gave the first decisive rebuff of enemy aviation.
But all other troops were in a demonstratively damped state. Everyone knows the epic with the holidays and dismissals of personnel on June 21-22 and other things that do not happen when the race is ahead of the enemy. She walked, but not at the border. Somewhere in the rear, the armored echelons with the troops rushed, and even further - new waves of troops were only loaded into echelons. There was a titanic transfer of troops, but all this was a little further. At the border was an accentuated demonstration of complacency.
With the outbreak of hostilities in several very important areas, things happened that no one really took to explain. We have already described in detail how many troops stood in and around Brest. They were enough to arrange a bloody bath for the enemy, and armed resistance was provided only by a part of the garrison of the Brest Fortress. Already at 7 am the advance units of the Wehrmacht reported that the city was busy and there was no contact with the enemy. Approximately the same thing happened to the north. On June 24, parts of the Wehrmacht entered Kaunas and found that all the key objects of the city were controlled by local defense forces, and battles were fought only at the border and then - much deeper. And aerial reconnaissance data showed that from the Kaunas and Siauliai districts, to the east, echelons with troops and equipment leave. There was a strange situation when the battles at the border were over and several tens of kilometers could be passed without a fight. Approximately this happened with Brest.
All these oddities occurred in the very first days and explain their loss of control is hardly possible. It happened a little later. Roughly speaking, border areas saturated with troops showed two opposite tendencies. Some - somehow entered the battle, without much success, as a large mass of troops rebounded a couple of dozen kilometers from the border. In the soviet memoir, there is often a description of how the Red Army soldiers, including those in the Brest Fortress, got surrounded by brave commanders in order to hold out until the approach of the main forces that did not come.
Incidentally, at first, the maneuver for the withdrawal of part of the troops from the border was hardly chaotic. From the same Lithuania, the troops did not play on foot, but left not somewhere, but on the Finnish border, where they tried to launch an offensive. That is, such a small rebound was still part of the plan. In fact, 150 thousand. The grouping of the Red Army in Brest and around it simply could not meddle without mediation, and yet, 3 hours after the offensive began, no one was present in the city and its environs, and the German troops were confronted only with the local population, City headquarters: the 28th Rifle Corps of the 4th Army; The 6th and 42nd Infantry Divisions of this corps; 22nd Panzer Division of the 14th Mechanized Corps.
Maybe somebody is happy with an explanation of the type: in the evening of June 21 these staffs were still stuffed with generals, colonels and lower-ranked officers, around them stood their troops, with tanks, artillery and everything else, and by 7 am the next day near the staffs only doves and Neighbor cats.
Moreover, relying on a description of the further events that the German sources give, these same troops were pretty tightly involved in the fighting, and the Bialystok group of troops that fell into the first big cauldron died not just. Troops shook the nerves of the German military. And later it was about the same thing. Not all aviation was destroyed near the border, at the overloaded airfields. In the early days of the war there were powerful air battles in the sky. Suffice it to recall that the RACA aces brought the score of air victories to dozens, while the Luftwaffe aces had hundreds of downed enemy planes. Most of this statistics - June-July 1941.
In the scoop it was not customary to recall how the fighting took place a few days after the invasion began, and Halder described them dryly, but capacitively. He wrote how German fighters dumped the waves of Soviet-made bombers that were going without the cover of fighters. In one battle dozens of aircraft. Just as successfully forgotten about the largest tank battle near Dbuno. And how the infantry chains went on machine guns and artillery, and all these 12 chains were put into the ground by machine-gunners.
All this to the fact that they left like this and then - they stubbornly went on to the true death, the same people. Why? It can not be that the one who the day before yesterday desperately draped, today calmly went to certain death. As from the point of view of individual fighters, commanders and separate units, and from the point of view of the army as a whole, there is a clear duality of behavior. Just yesterday, the troops were given a command - not to provoke, but already exactly a month later, General Pavlov, the commander of the Western Front, was shot for not provoking a very high quality. How many such Pavlovians were shot, we hardly ever find out. It seems that in all this bloody carousel there is, and there can be no logic or there is no certain detail that will put everything in its place, but, in fact, it is.
It is necessary to recall what a scoop met the morning of June 22, 1941. Formally, he did not enter into the alliance of Germany in Italy and Japan, but nevertheless, had quite tangible allied relations with Germany. However much the Russians deny the existence of secret annexes to the Ribbentrop Molotov Pact, but the joint parade of Soviet and German troops in Brest-Litovsk has placed everything in its place. It's not even that the military of both countries showed hugs and teddies, but that Brest was stormed and captured by German troops, and he got a scoop. It would seem that if Poland was torn without a preliminary agreement, then why Guderian was given the Brest of the Red Army, which did not storm it? Only a previously agreed section of Poland made possible the transfer of Brest and a smart joint parade. Strictly speaking, this fact, like many others, is not accepted only in Russia, in the rest of the world no one disputes about this.
That is, the scoop directly tied to Germany in terms of unleashing a continental war. Stalin spit on this, for he pursued his own territorial interests and knew for sure that the piece of Poland would not be limited. As soon as the partition of Poland was completed, the Finnish campaign began, for which the scoop was banished from the League of Nations. But even this Stalin did not take much interest, because the queue was Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. In principle, for this scoop could get a war on the part of England, but by that time France had already fallen and Albion could no longer simply scatter the declarations of war so easily,.
But here the redistribution of Europe without a direct clash of a scoop and Germany ended. They left the frontier forehead and any further territorial acquisitions were to lead to war. As early as January 1941, Hitler stated that the time of bloodless or relatively bloodless acquisitions of the territories was over and further advancement of the Reich borders is connected with a great war.
Almost in the same plan, Stalin also spoke, and, the last time he did it on May 5, 1941, before the graduates of military academies. That is, the parties' understanding of the inevitability of a great war was absolute. Stalin was aware of Hitler's plans and calmly watched the concentration of his troops at his borders. There is an important point connected with the fact that in the summer of 1940, when the Wehrmacht was hacking in the West, Stalin had an ideal window for the attack, for the enemy troops were connected, and before his front of the troops there simply was not.
The situation was so successful for carrying out the "Thunderstorm" plan or the like, that it was impossible even to dream about this. Only Stalin missed this moment. Many people say that the scoop was not ready, by this time. But any reasoning in this direction rests on a simple thing. Let it be at this time that Stalin could throw 120-150 divisions into the western march, strenuously forming new divisions. Is this a lot or a little? But after all, the enemy in Poland had practically no troops! This one hundred and fifty divisions simply did not have anyone to fight with! It is hardly possible to blame Stalin for dullness, but because he could not see this opportunity. Then again the question arises: why?.
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