In Russia, the loyal action of who is the greatest patriot does not cease. The leaders of the campaign are the top of Chechnya. Meanwhile, as history shows, with the weakening of Russia, the Chechens go over to the side of the enemy. In 1941-42, they sided with Hitler with almost the entire republic.
There were several such critical situations with the highlanders in the history of Russia - in the middle of the 19th century, when their environment was crammed with English agents (the Interpreter's Blog wrote about this); during the Revolution and Civil War 1917-21; finally, during the formation of the statehood of the Russian Federation in the 1990s, when hundreds of thousands of people of other nationalities (primarily Russians) were expelled from Chechnya, and the republic itself turned into a terrorist enclave (thousands of Russian soldiers died during the liquidation of this bandit formation).
The Great Patriotic War is a special example of the betrayal of the representatives of Chechnya. We will only touch on its first period - 1941-42, and present only a small part of the collaboration of the Chechens.
DESERTION
The first charge that should be brought against the Chechens following the results of the Great Patriotic War is mass desertion. Here is what was said about this in a memo addressed to the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Lavrenty Beria "On the situation in the regions of the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic", compiled by the Deputy People's Commissar of State Security, Commissioner of State Security of the 2nd rank Bogdan Kobulov based on the results of his trip to Checheno-Ingushetia in October 1943 and dated November 9, 1943:
“The attitude of the Chechens and Ingush to the Soviet regime was clearly expressed in desertion and evasion of conscription into the ranks of the Red Army.
During the first mobilization in August 1941, out of 8000 people to be conscripted, 719 people deserted. In October 1941, out of 4,733 people, 362 dodged the draft. In January 1942, when recruiting the national division, it was possible to call in only 50% of the personnel.
In March 1942, out of 14,576 people deserted and evaded service, 13,560 people (i.e. 93%), who went into an illegal position, went to the mountains and joined the gangs.
In 1943, out of 3,000 volunteers, the number of deserters was 1,870 ”.
In total, over the three years of the war, 49,362 Chechens and Ingush deserted from the ranks of the Red Army, another 13,389 people evaded conscription, which makes up 62,751 people in total.
And how many Chechens and Ingush fought at the front? Local historians compose various fables on this score. For example, Doctor of Historical Sciences Hadji Murat Ibrahimbeyli states:
“More than 30 thousand Chechens and Ingush fought on the fronts. In the first weeks of the war, more than 12 thousand communists and Komsomol members - Chechens and Ingush joined the army, most of whom died in the fighting.
The reality looks much more modest. While in the ranks of the Red Army, 2,300 Chechens and Ingush were killed and gone missing. Is it a lot or a little? The Buryat people, half as large in number, who were not threatened by the German occupation, lost 13 thousand people at the front, Ossetians were one and a half times inferior to the Chechens and Ingush - 10.7 thousand.
As of March 1949, among the special settlers there were 4,248 Chechens and 946 Ingush who had previously served in the Red Army. Contrary to popular belief, a number of Chechens and Ingush were exempted from being sent to the settlement for military services. As a result, we find that no more than 10 thousand Chechens and Ingush served in the ranks of the Red Army, while over 60 thousand of their relatives evaded mobilization or deserted.
Let's say a few words about the notorious 114th Chechen-Ingush Cavalry Division, about the exploits of which pro-Chechen authors love to talk about. Due to the stubborn reluctance of the indigenous inhabitants of the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic to go to the front, its formation was never completed, and the personnel that they managed to draft were sent to spare and training units in March 1942.
Bandit Hasan Israilov
The next charge is banditry. From July 1941 to 1944, only in that territory of the Chechen Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, which was later transformed into the Grozny region, 197 gangs were destroyed by the state security bodies. At the same time, the total irrecoverable losses of the bandits amounted to 4532 people: 657 killed, 2762 captured, 1113 confessed. Thus, in the ranks of the bandit formations that fought against the Red Army, almost twice as many Chechens and Ingush were killed and taken prisoner than at the front. And this is not counting the losses of the Vainakhs who fought on the side of the Wehrmacht in the so-called "eastern battalions"!
By that time, the old "cadres" of abreks and local religious authorities, through the efforts of the OGPU, and then the NKVD, were mostly knocked out. They were replaced by a young gangster growth - Komsomol members and communists who were brought up by the Soviet government, who studied in Soviet universities.
Its typical representative was Khasan Israilov, also known under the pseudonym "Terloev", which he took by the name of his teip. He was born in 1910 in the village of Nachkhoy, Galanchozhsky district. In 1929 he joined the CPSU (b), in the same year he entered the Komvuz in Rostov-on-Don. In 1933, to continue his studies, Israilov was sent to Moscow, to the Communist University of the Workers of the East. I. V. Stalin. In 1935 he was sentenced to 5 years in forced labor camps, but in 1937 he was released. Returning to his homeland, he worked as a lawyer in the Shatoevsky district.
1941 uprising
After the start of the Great Patriotic War, Khasan Israilov, together with his brother Hussein, went into an illegal position, developing activities to prepare a general uprising. To this end, he held 41 meetings in various auls, created combat groups in Galanchozh and Itum-Kalinsky districts, as well as in Borzoi, Harsinoe, Dagi-Borzoi, Achekhna and other settlements. Commissioners were also sent to the neighboring Caucasian republics.
The uprising was originally scheduled for the fall of 1941 in order to coincide with the approach of German troops. However, since the blitzkrieg schedule fell through, its deadline was postponed to January 10, 1942. A single coordinated action did not take place, resulting in scattered premature actions by individual groups.
So, on October 21, 1941, residents of the Khilokhoy farm in the Nachkhoevsky village council of the Galanchozhsky district plundered the collective farm and put up armed resistance to the task force trying to restore order. An operational detachment of 40 people was sent to the area to arrest the instigators. Underestimating the seriousness of the situation, his commander divided his people into two groups, heading for the Khaibakhai and Khilokhoi farms. This turned out to be a fatal mistake. The first of the groups was surrounded by rebels. Having lost four people killed and six wounded in the shootout, she was disarmed as a result of the cowardice of the group leader and, with the exception of four operatives, was shot. The second, having heard the firefight, began to retreat and, being surrounded in the village of Galanchozh, was also disarmed. As a result, the performance was suppressed only after the introduction of large forces.
A week later, on October 29, militiamen detained in the village of Borzoy, Shatoy District, Naizulu Dzhangireyev, who was evading labor service and inciting the population to do so. His brother, Guchik Dzhangireyev, called on his fellow villagers for help. After Guchik's statement: "There is no Soviet power, you can act" - the gathered crowd disarmed the militia workers, smashed the village council and plundered the collective farm cattle. With the rebels from the surrounding villages who joined the Borzoevites, they put up armed resistance to the NKVD task force, however, unable to withstand a retaliatory strike, they scattered through the forests and gorges, as did the participants in a similar demonstration that took place a little later in the Bavloevsky village council of the Itum-Kalinsky district.
Then Israilov intervened in the case. He built his organization on the principle of armed detachments, covering a certain region or group of settlements with their activities. The main link were the aulkoms, or troika-fives, who carried out anti-Soviet and insurgent work in the field.
Already on January 28, 1942, Israilov held an illegal meeting in Ordzhonikidze (now Vladikavkaz), at which the "Special Party of Caucasian Brothers" (OPKB) was established. As befits a self-respecting party, the OPKB had its own charter, a program providing "Creation in the Caucasus of a free fraternal Federal Republic of states of fraternal peoples of the Caucasus under the mandate of the German Empire".
Later, to better please the Germans, Israilov renamed his organization the National Socialist Party of the Caucasian Brothers (NSPKB). Its number, according to the NKVD, soon reached 5,000.
Uprising of 1942
Another large anti-Soviet group on the territory of Checheno-Ingushetia was the so-called "Chechen-Gorsk National Socialist Underground Organization" created in November 1941. Its leader, Mairbek Sheripov, like Israilov, was a representative of a new generation. The son of a tsarist officer and younger brother of the famous commander of the so-called "Chechen Red Army" Aslanbek Sheripov, was born in 1905. Just like Israilov, he joined the CPSU (b), was also arrested for anti-Soviet propaganda - in 1938, and released in 1939. However, unlike Israilov, Sheripov had a higher social status, being the chairman of the Lespromsovet ChI ASSR.
Having passed into an illegal position in the fall of 1941, Mayrbek Sheripov united around himself the leaders of gangs, deserters, fugitive criminals hiding in the Shatoevsky, Cheberloevsky and parts of the Itum-Kalinsky districts, and also established contacts with religious and teip authorities in villages, trying to persuade the population for an armed uprising against the Soviet regime. Sheripov's main base, where he was hiding and recruiting like-minded people, was in the Shatoevsky district. There he had wide family ties.
Sheripov has repeatedly changed the name of his organization: "Society for the Salvation of Highlanders", "Union of Liberated Highlanders", "Chechen-Ingush Union of Mountain Nationalists" and, finally, "Chechen-Mountain National Socialist Underground Organization". In the first half of 1942, he wrote the organization's program, in which he outlined its ideological platform, goals and objectives.
After the front approached the borders of the republic, in August 1942, Sheripov managed to establish contact with the inspirer of several past uprisings, the mullah and associate of Imam Gotsinsky, Javotkhan Murtazaliev, who since 1925 was in an illegal situation with his entire family. Taking advantage of his authority, he managed to raise a major uprising in the Itum-Kalinsky and Shatoevsky regions.
The uprising began in the village of Dzum, Itum-Kalinsky district. Having defeated the village council and the management of the collective farm, Sheripov led the bandits rallied around him to the regional center of the Shatoevsky district - the village of Khimoy. On August 17, 1942, Khimoy was taken, the rebels destroyed the party and Soviet institutions, and the local population plundered and stole the property stored there. The capture of the regional center was a success thanks to the betrayal of the head of the department for combating banditry of the NKVD of the ChI ASSR Ingush Idris Aliyev, who kept in touch with Sheripov. The day before the attack, he prudently recalled the task force and the military unit from Khimoy, which were specially designed to guard the regional center in case of a raid.
After that, about 150 participants in the rebellion, led by Sheripov, went to seize the Itum-Kale regional center of the eponymous region, joining the rebels and criminals along the way. Itum-Kale one and a half thousand rebels surrounded on August 20. However, they could not take the village. A small garrison located there repulsed all attacks, and the two companies that approached put the rebels to flight. The defeated Sheripov tried to unite with Israilov, but the state security bodies were finally able to organize a special operation, as a result of which on November 7, 1942, the leader of the Shatoy bandits was killed.
The next uprising was organized in October of the same year by the German non-commissioned officer Reckert, who was abandoned in Chechnya in August at the head of a sabotage group. Having established contact with the gang of Rasul Sakhabov, with the assistance of religious authorities, he recruited up to 400 people and, supplying them with German weapons dropped from aircraft, managed to raise a number of villages in the Vedensky and Cheberloevsky regions. However, thanks to the adopted operational-military measures, this armed uprising was eliminated, Reckert was killed, and the commander of another sabotage group, Dzugaev, who joined him, was arrested. The asset of the insurgent formation created by Reckert and Rasul Sakhabov in the amount of 32 people was also arrested, and Sakhabov himself was killed in October 1943 by his bloodthirsty Ramazan Magomadov, who was promised forgiveness for gangster activities.
(Quotes: Igor Pykhalov, "Small-town passions in the Chechen mountains")
The generally accepted opinion that the prisoners of fascist concentration camps were mocked exclusively by the personnel of these death prisons is in fact not entirely true - the Nazis were serviced by accomplices from among the prisoners themselves. They were called "kapos".
And often the volunteer assistants of the Nazis committed atrocities no less than their temporary patrons.
And the Jews aspired to the "kapo"
The etymology of this word is still unclear. Translated from Italian, capo means "head" ("chief"), in French caporal - "corporal", "chief". It is only obvious that this generally accepted designation of the status of Nazi accomplices in Nazi concentration camps was derogatory - the "capo" was despised by both the camp administration staff and the prisoners.
Judging by the archives scrupulously preserved by the neat Germans, the administration of the concentration camps was not particularly interested in the nationality or social origin of the "capos" - among these Nazi accomplices were both Jews and representatives of other "minor", "non-Nordic" nations.
There is a prejudice that the concentration camps of the Third Reich were only a temporary refuge for the inhabitants of the countries occupied by Nazi Germany, prepared for destruction. This is not entirely true - there were kept (of course, in different conditions than Soviet prisoners of war) local criminals and other rabble, captured French, British and representatives of other countries of the anti-Hitler coalition, who were treated relatively softer than other categories of prisoners.
It even happened that the chiefs of these Nazi concentration camps appointed Jews "kapos" to barracks, where mainly the fined German soldiers and officers were kept - in this way they used to joke about the guilty ones. Of course, the Germans "theirs" were not sent to the gas chambers, they were not starved and exhaustively worked. But these prisoners should have been humiliated by the very fact that the overseers over the representatives of the highest Aryan race were the yude.
What was their function
In the "kapo" prisoners most often sought because of the desire to survive in a concentration camp at any cost. As long as these hangers-on were needed, they existed. The "kapos" constituted the camp asset. As applied to our time, they were a kind of "grandfathers" in the Soviet (Russian) army - informal leaders who ruled over the masses of forced laborers with the consent and on direct instructions of their superiors. Only the rights of the "capo" were determined not by the term of service, but solely by loyalty to the administration of the concentration camp and the willingness to carry out his orders. The methods of influencing the "wards" of the "grandfathers" and the "capos" were similar. Among the Germans (natives of Germany), the "capos" in the camps most often became criminals.
The "Kapos" exercised grassroots control over the prisoners of the barrack, distributed food, and enforced discipline. They were appointed chiefs or overseers. In return, the "kapos" received the opportunity to eat better than their wards (more often at their own expense), the Nazi accomplices received concessions in terms of adherence to the regime and uniforms, and other preferences.
In return, the “kapos” demonstrated an absolute readiness for any punitive actions in relation to prisoners. For example, according to the recollections of the prisoners of the Mittelbau-Dora camp, the "capos" there were exclusively Jews. They immediately reported any violations of the prisoners to the administration of the concentration camp. Often the "kapos" beat their fellows no less severely than the Nazi guards did. Sometimes people were beaten to death. There is evidence that there were sodomites among the "kapo" Jews who raped prisoners, including minors.
There is an opinion that some of the Jews, prisoners of fascist concentration camps, escaped from inevitable death precisely because they were "capos". The Nazis intended to destroy the representatives of this nation completely, but while the contingent of concentration camps from among the yude was replenished, the Nazis needed helpers from among those sentenced to death themselves in order to bring their plan to the end.
Resistance at Treblinka
However, in the history of the "capo" there were examples of latent opposition to the Nazi regime. In particular, the underground organization, which included the activists of the Treblinka concentration camp, tried in every possible way to alleviate the plight of the prisoners. Its backbone consisted of the camp staff doctor Y. Khoronzhitsky, the "chief command post" (senior camp) engineer Galevsky and a member of Treblinka's security sector Z. Bloch.
Khoronzhitsky was preparing an uprising in Treblinka. But it ended in failure. The doctor managed to take the poison before he was captured and executed. Subsequently, his associates made another attempt, but the Nazis shot most of the conspirators.
On December 18, 1940, Hitler, in Directive No. 21, approved the final plan for the war against the USSR under the code name "Barbarossa". For its implementation, Germany and its allies in Europe - Finland, Romania and Hungary - created an invading army unprecedented in history: 182 divisions and 20 brigades (up to 5 million people), 47.2 thousand guns and mortars, about 4.4 thousand combat aircraft, 4.4 thousand tanks and assault guns, and 250 ships. In the grouping of Soviet troops opposing the aggressors, there were 186 divisions (3 million people), about 39.4 guns and mortars, 11 thousand tanks and more than 9.1 thousand aircraft. These forces were not put on alert in advance. The directive of the General Staff of the Red Army about a possible attack by Germany on June 22-23 did not reach the western border districts until the night of June 22, and already at dawn on June 22, the invasion began. After a lengthy artillery preparation, at 4:00 am, German troops, treacherously violating the non-aggression pact concluded with the USSR, attacked the Soviet-German border along its entire length from the Barents to the Black Seas. Soviet troops were taken by surprise. The organization of powerful counterattacks against the enemy was hampered by the fact that they were relatively evenly distributed along the entire front along the entire border and dispersed to great depths. With such a formation, it was difficult to resist the enemy.
On June 22, on the radio, the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs V.M. Molotov. In particular, he said: “This unheard-of attack on our country is unprecedented treachery in the history of civilized peoples. The attack on our country was carried out despite the fact that a non-aggression pact was concluded between the USSR and Germany. "
On June 23, 1941, the supreme body of strategic leadership of the armed forces, the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command, was created in Moscow. All power in the country was concentrated in the hands of the State Defense Committee (GKO) formed on June 30. He was appointed Chairman of the State Defense Committee and the Supreme Commander-in-Chief. The country began to implement a program of emergency measures under the motto: “Everything for the front! Everything for the victory! " The Red Army, however, continued to retreat. By mid-July 1941, German troops advanced 300-600 km deep into Soviet territory, capturing Lithuania, Latvia, almost all of Belarus, a significant part of Estonia, Ukraine and Moldova, and created a threat to Leningrad, Smolensk and Kiev. A mortal danger loomed over the USSR.
OPERATIONAL SUMMARY No. 1 OF THE CHIEF OF THE GENERAL STAFF OF THE RKKA GENERAL OF THE ARMY G.K. Zhukov. 10.00, June 22, 1941
At 4.00 on 22.06.1941, the Germans, without any reason, raided our airfields and cities and crossed the border with ground troops ...
1. Northern Front: the enemy violated the border with a bomber-type aircraft link and entered the Leningrad and Kronstadt regions ...
2. Northwestern Front. The enemy opened artillery fire at 4.00 and at the same time began to bomb airfields and cities: Vindava, Libava, Kovno, Vilno and Shuliai ...
Z. Western Front. At 4:20 am, up to 60 enemy aircraft were bombarded by Grodno and Brest. At the same time, the enemy opened artillery fire on the entire border of the Western Front…. With ground forces, the enemy is developing a strike from the Suwalki area in the direction of Golynka, Dombrow and from the Stokolow area along the railway to Volkovysk. The advancing enemy forces are being specified. ...
4. Southwestern Front. At 4:20 am, the enemy began shelling our borders with machine-gun fire. From 4.30 on, enemy aircraft are bombing the cities of Lyuboml, Kovel, Lutsk, Vladimir-Volynsky ... At 4.35, after artillery fire in the Vladimir-Volynsky, Lyuboml area, enemy ground troops crossed the border developing a strike in the direction of Vladimir-Volynsky, Lyuboml and Krystynopol ...
The front commanders have put in place a cover plan and by active actions of mobile troops are trying to destroy the enemy units that have crossed the border ...
The enemy, preempting our troops in deployment, forced the Red Army units to engage in battle in the process of occupying an initial position according to the cover plan. Using this advantage, the enemy was able to achieve partial success in certain areas.
Signature: Chief of the General Staff of the Red Army G.K. Zhukov
The Great Patriotic War - day after day: based on the materials of declassified operational reports of the General Staff of the Red Army. M., 2008 .
RADIO SPEECH BY THE DEPUTY CHAIRMAN OF THE COUNCIL OF PEOPLE'S COMMISSARS OF THE USSR and PEOPLE'S COMMISSIONER FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS OF THE USSR V.M. MOLOTOV June 22, 1941
Citizens and citizens of the Soviet Union!
The Soviet government and its head, Comrade Stalin, instructed me to make the following statement:
Today, at 4 o'clock in the morning, without making any claims to the Soviet Union, without declaring war, German troops attacked our country, attacked our borders in many places and bombed our cities from their planes - Zhitomir, Kiev, Sevastopol, Kaunas and some others, and more than two hundred people were killed and wounded. Enemy aircraft raids and artillery shelling were also carried out from the Romanian and Finnish territories.
This unheard-of attack on our country is treachery unparalleled in the history of civilized nations. The attack on our country was carried out in spite of the fact that a non-aggression pact was concluded between the USSR and Germany and the Soviet government fulfilled all the terms of this treaty with all conscientiousness. The attack on our country was accomplished, despite the fact that during the entire period of this treaty, the German government could never present a single claim to the USSR for the implementation of the treaty. All responsibility for this predatory attack on the Soviet Union falls entirely on the German fascist rulers (...)
The government calls on you, citizens and women of the Soviet Union, to rally your ranks even more closely around our glorious Bolshevik Party, around our Soviet government, around our great leader, Comrade. Stalin.
Our cause is right. The enemy will be defeated. Victory will be ours.
Foreign policy documents. T.24. M., 2000.
STALIN'S SPEECH ON THE RADIO, July 3, 1941
Comrades! Citizens!
Brothers and sisters!
Soldiers of our army and navy!
I appeal to you, my friends!
The treacherous military attack by Hitlerite Germany on our Motherland, which began on June 22, continues. Despite the heroic resistance of the Red Army, despite the fact that the best divisions of the enemy and the best units of its aviation have already been defeated and found a grave on the battlefields, the enemy continues to climb forward, throwing new forces to the front (...)
History shows that there are no invincible armies and never happened. Napoleon's army was considered invincible, but it was defeated alternately by Russian, English, German troops. During the first imperialist war, Wilhelm's German army was also considered an invincible army, but it was defeated several times by Russian and Anglo-French troops and, finally, was defeated by Anglo-French troops. The same must be said about Hitler's current German fascist army. This army has not yet met serious resistance on the continent of Europe. Only on our territory did it meet serious resistance (...)
One may ask: how could it have happened that the Soviet government agreed to conclude a non-aggression pact with such treacherous people and monsters as Hitler and Ribbentrop? Was there not a mistake on the part of the Soviet government here? Of course not! A non-aggression pact is a peace pact between two states. It was precisely such a pact that Germany proposed to us in 1939. Could the Soviet government refuse such a proposal? I think that no peace-loving state can refuse a peace agreement with a neighboring power, if even such monsters and cannibals as Hitler and Ribbentrop are at the head of this power. And this, of course, under one indispensable condition - if the peace agreement does not affect, either directly or indirectly, the territorial integrity, independence and honor of the peace-loving state. As you know, the non-aggression pact between Germany and the USSR is just such a pact (...)
In case of the forced withdrawal of the Red Army units, it is necessary to hijack the entire rolling stock, not to leave the enemy a single steam locomotive, not a single carriage, not to leave the enemy a kilogram of bread or a liter of fuel (...) In the areas occupied by the enemy, it is necessary to create partisan detachments, horse and foot to create sabotage groups to fight parts of the enemy army, to incite guerrilla war everywhere and everywhere, to blow up bridges, roads, damage telephone and telegraph communications, set fire to forests, warehouses, carts. In the occupied areas, create unbearable conditions for the enemy and all his accomplices, pursue and destroy them at every step, disrupt all their activities (...)
In this great war, we will have loyal allies in the person of the peoples of Europe and America, including the German people enslaved by Hitler's rulers. Our war for the freedom of our Fatherland will merge with the struggle of the peoples of Europe and America for their independence, for democratic freedoms (...)
In order to quickly mobilize all the forces of the peoples of the USSR, to repulse the enemy who treacherously attacked our homeland, the State Defense Committee has been created, in whose hands all the power in the state is now concentrated. The State Defense Committee has begun its work and calls on the entire people to rally around the Lenin-Stalin party, around the Soviet government for selfless support of the Red Army and the Red Fleet, for the defeat of the enemy, for victory.
All our forces are to support our heroic Red Army, our glorious Red Navy!
All the forces of the people - to defeat the enemy!
Forward to our victory!
Stalin I. About the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union. M., 1947.
HISTORY LESSONSThe anniversary of the Great Victory is getting closer. I would like to remind you that this is not just a victory - it is a victory of the Soviet people in the struggle for their very existence, because the purpose of this war was the destruction of the Russian and other peoples of the USSR. This is the main thing that children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of those who gave their lives for the Victory should remember.
But after decades of operation of a gigantic ideological machine, what is called World War II is associated in the minds of the modern layman in the West and increasingly in Russia itself with the so-called. Holocaust - genocide of European Jews, caricature of Hitler, horrors of Stalinism and D-Day - the opening of the Second Front in Europe. The Great Patriotic War is increasingly seen as one of the episodes, and not even the most significant, of the Second World War. Any idea of the special, fundamentally different nature of the war of Nazi Germany and its allies against the USSR has turned out to be practically erased from the modern mass consciousness. Meanwhile, this war was unique in its tasks, methods and consequences for world history. Between 1939 and 1945 there were two wars, partly coinciding in time and intertwined with each other, but, nevertheless, sharply different in nature.
One, from September 1939 to September 1945, was a “normal” “world” war between the largest imperialist powers in the world, differing from the first “world” only in its greater size and lethality.
The other - from June 22, 1941 to May 1945 - had all the traditional elements of the wars of European imperialism against non-European peoples, from the first crusades of the 11th century to the British conquest of India, the extermination of the peoples of the Western Hemisphere, the opium wars in China, the devastation of the African and Australian continents. The war of German imperialism and its European allies against the USSR absorbed this historical experience of colonialism and developed its methods to the most concentrated and brutal expression. But her unique character was different.
The Barbarossa plan was not just a military "blitzkrieg" plan to defeat the Red Army and the Soviet state. And not even just a plan to conquer Lebensraum - "living space" for the German nation and its colonization. It was a plan for a crusade, an ideological "holy war" aimed at the eradication of "Judeo-Bolshevism", the destruction of the Soviet people, the ideological, state and economic foundations of its existence, primarily the state existence of the Great Russian and other Slavic peoples, which constituted the backbone of the Russian Empire and Soviet Union. For the Soviet people, the Great Patriotic War was a struggle for its historical existence - "to be or not to be."
But the genocide of European Jews was "unique" except in the sense that it was genocide in Europe against Europeans. But even in this respect, the "Holocaust" was not unique. It was preceded by the British genocide of the Irish. The example of the Irish shows that the ideology of European racism originates within the white race and only then begins to spread to non-European peoples, to the "colored".
White racism is now growing in Russia. It is not out of place for our champions of white racial solidarity with whites in the West to recall the authoritative opinion of the famous historian Christopher Hill: “the majority of educated Englishmen belonging to the upper strata of society in the seventeenth century spoke about the Irish in the same vein as, for example, the fascists about the Slavs or the white South Africans about the indigenous population - in all these cases, contempt was a justification for the need to exploit. "
No, if one can speak at all about the uniqueness of any genocide, then, in the sense of its ideological origins and political objectives, such genocide was the genocide of the Soviet people, with which the Jewish genocide was inextricably linked.
Hitler pointed out the need to learn from the British the art of domination over conquered peoples and their exploitation. The USSR was to become the German "India" - the Nazi laboratory of racial politics, a bottomless source of slave labor and natural resources.
John Toland, the famous biographer of Hitler, says:
“Hitler stated that he owed much of the idea of concentration camps and the practicality of genocide to his study of the history of England and the United States. He admired the Boer prisoner camps in South Africa and the Indians in the Wild West, and in his inner circle often praised the effectiveness of the destruction of the "red savages" in America with the help of hunger and superior military force. "
From the Fuehrer's Guide to the Management of the Eastern Territories:
The Slavs must work for us. If we don't need them, they can die. Therefore, compulsory vaccinations and German health care are superfluous for them. High Slavic fertility is undesirable. They can use contraception and abortion as much as they want. Education is dangerous. Quite enough ... if they can count to a hundred. As a last resort, education is permissible if it helps us prepare useful servants for us. Every educated person is our future enemy. We will leave religion to them as a distraction. When it comes to food, they shouldn't get more than the minimum required. We are the owners, we are everything.
The contribution of the Black Hundred and the White Guard movement to the ideology of German Nazism and its practice of genocide remains underestimated. And he was decisive in his way. It was the White Guards who created and tested Hitler's central ideological synthesis - the combination of the old European anti-Slavic racism and anti-Semitism with anti-Marxism and anti-Bolshevism.
The decisive link between Hitler and the Black Hundred was the Baltic German from Latvia Alfred Rosenberg and his White émigré friends led by Staff Captain Fyodor Vinberg. In the early 1920s, Winberg and Rosenberg became the ideologues of a secret organization of Russian and German reactionaries - Aufbau, Reconstruction. It was through the White Guards Vinberg and Rosenberg that Hitler adopted the synthesis of anti-Bolshevism and political anti-Semitism, which formed the ideological basis of Barbarossa.
According to the Fuehrer's explanations before the start of the war, the upcoming campaign will be a struggle between "two worldviews". Hitler characterized Bolshevism as "social crime" and communism as "a great danger to the future." Therefore, in the East, German soldiers will have to abandon their usual respect for the enemy.
In final instructions from May 13, Chief of Staff Keitel declared the problems of "appeasement" (a word borrowed from the terminology of the North American genocide) too huge and complex for conventional military tribunals and authorized the troops to "take ruthless action themselves", "eliminate" guerrillas and use "the most extreme methods »Against hostile civilians. All officers were instructed to decide on the spot whether or not to shoot suspected hostile actions behind the front line, while battalion-level commanders became responsible for taking hostages for collective retaliation on residents of a particular point. Crimes by German soldiers against civilians were to be tried by a tribunal only if they threatened military discipline.
At the same time, since February 21, 1941, the propaganda services of the armed forces have also prepared leaflets, posters and radio broadcasts addressed to Soviet servicemen and civilians. The first and most widespread of these accused Stalin's "Jewish-communist" government of violating the treaties it had concluded with Germany. The leaflet implored the soldiers and officers of the Red Army not to "shed their blood for the Third International ... for Stalin and his Jewish commissars," whose regime was "hundreds of times worse" than the tsarist one. German troops went to put an end to "the criminal machinations of this Jewish clique that torture and exploit the peoples of the Soviet Union."
One of the most enduring myths created by Nazi generals and their American masters during the Cold War is the myth that the Wehrmacht was not involved in the genocide in the East. In reality, everything was the other way around. The Wehrmacht accepted the program of ideological warfare with such readiness and began its implementation with such zeal that it began to threaten the central role of the SS in cleansing the eastern Lebensraum of "Judeo-Bolshevism". The Wehrmacht waged a political war of destruction, in no way inferior to its "comrades in arms" in black uniforms.
The central role in the development of economic policy under the Barbarossa Plan was entrusted to a group of scientific experts at the General Staff. Their recommendations, presented at two meetings in May 1941, boiled down to the following plan. The European territory of the USSR will be divided into two zones: 1) the "excess zone" or "black earth" (Schwarzendezone) in the south, including the Caucasus, and 2) the "hunger zone" (Hungergebiet) in the north, primarily around Moscow and Leningrad. In the "zone of surplus" the population could hope to receive the minimum amount of food necessary for life. In the "hunger zone" it was doomed to extinction.
So the genocide of "many tens of millions" of Soviet people had to take the form of a famine. And here, too, Hitler's teachers were White Setlers and the British in North America and Africa, the British in Ireland, Hindustan, China and Australia.
These were the historical origins and goals of Operation Barbarossa, which began in the predawn hours of June 22, 1941 along the front from the Baltic to the Black Sea.
Between these goals and their achievement stood only one force - the Red Army.
The carpenter who could change history
Georg Elser is an ordinary German carpenter who single-handedly planned and organized the assassination attempt on Hitler in 1939. He was a staunch Protestant and sympathetic to the Communists. Unlike many compatriots, from the very beginning he was not fascinated by the ideas of the National Socialists and most of all feared a new war. Listening to the speeches of the Fuhrer, Elser came to the conclusion that only the assassination of Hitler could stop the coming catastrophe. To eliminate the Fuhrer, Elser single-handedly developed a homemade bomb, which he himself mounted in a column next to the leader's tribune in Munich's beer hall, where Hitler spoke to fellow party members every year on the anniversary of the Beer Putsch.
It took Elser almost a year to implement the plan. For this, he spent almost 30 nights in the cellars of the pub, to gouge a niche and freely mount explosives. As a result of the explosion, 7 people were killed on the spot, 63 were wounded, but the Fuhrer himself remained unharmed. By unfortunate coincidence of circumstances, he unexpectedly reduced his speech to a short greeting and left the hall a few minutes before the explosion.
Elser was captured that evening on the border with Switzerland, and he confessed everything, saying that he wanted to avoid more bloodshed. The Gestapo could not believe that the assassination attempt was planned by him alone, and Hitler himself was convinced that the British special services were behind the explosion. Georg Elser was placed in Dachau as a special prisoner and was shot on April 9, 1945, just 20 days before the camp was liberated by the Allies.
A fighter against mass euthanasia
Kreissig went down in history as the only judge of the Third Reich who was not afraid to openly go against the decisions of the Fuhrer and even tried to turn the current legislation against the Nazis. Like many others, in the 30s, Kreissig voted for the NSDAP, but in 1933 he refused to join the party. In 1940, he openly opposed Hitler's policy of euthanasia, calling it the mass murder of the physically disabled, and even brought charges of murder against one of the Nazis.
After this decisive act, Kreissig had to resign, and in 1942, by Hitler's decision, he was dismissed, where he devoted himself to church activities. During the war years, he was engaged in home farming, on the territory of which he sheltered two Jewish refugees. After the war, he was openly recognized as a hero of the resistance.
Hitler's personal enemy
Protestant priest Martin Niemöller, author of the famous poem "When They Came", was sent to Dachau on the personal orders of Hitler for criticizing the Nazi regime. During the First World War, Niemoller was the commander of a submarine, but after the end of the war he went to study at a theological seminary and was ordained. Since 1924, he voted for the NSDAP, and in 1933 he welcomed Hitler's rise to power as an alternative to communism. Remaining a National Socialist, he protested against the excommunication of "unclean" nationalities from the church, he called to oppose this law in his sermons and helped those who were persecuted.
In 1938 he was arrested for "attacks on the state" and sentenced to 7 months of hard labor. The Fuehrer, however, was very surprised by the mildness of the sentence and said that Niemoller would remain in prison until he turned blue. In 1941, the priest was sent to Dachau, where he served his sentence on relatively lenient conditions: the doors of his cell were not locked, he was allowed visits. In conclusion, Niemoller came to the conclusion that the German church was equally responsible for the crimes of the Nazis. Martin Niemöller was released in 1945. In the postwar years, he actively advocated for peace and disarmament.
"When they came"
“When the Nazis came for the communists, I was silent, I'm not a communist.
Then they came for the Social Democrats, I was silent, I am not a Social Democrat.
Then they came for the trade unionists, I was silent, I am not a union member.
Then they came for the Jews, I was silent, I am not a Jew.
And then they came for me, and there was no one to protest. "
Guillotine for "White Rose"
The White Rose is an underground organization in Munich, the names of its members have become symbols of the Resistance Movement in South Germany. The White Rose was created in Munich in the summer of 1942 by several students to agitate the city's residents to resist the Nazi regime. The organizers of the "White Rose" included a medical student from the University of Munich - Hans Scholl, his sister Sophie and several of their mutual friends. Young people were interested in art and music, sports and were united in their rejection of the political regime. Young people began to write and distribute leaflets calling for the fight against the Nazi regime.
At first, Hans Scholl intended to keep his sister out of political activities, but it was easier for Sophie to distribute leaflets - the SS did not often stop her on the street to check. Leaflets of the "White Rose" appeared not only in Munich, they were found in Cologne, Stuttgart, Berlin, Vienna, Salzburg, Linz. One of the leaflets made it to the UK, where the text was broadcast by the BBC, and copies were scattered over Germany from British planes.
In another leaflet, a call for an uprising sounded. But in February 1943, Sophie and her brother were arrested while trying to distribute a new batch of leaflets at the University of Munich, after three days of trial and torture, they were sentenced to guillotine along with other members of the movement. The sentencing judge later said that he had never seen anyone more courageous than twenty-year-old Sophie Scholl. At the trial, Sophie said: "In the end, someone had to start. Our beliefs are shared by many others. It's just that they, unlike us, are hesitant to say about it."
"Pirates of Edelweiss" and Gertrude Koch
"Pirates of Edelweiss" was a youth group that operated in Germany from 1939 to 1945. The name is due to the fact that edelweiss was one of the four symbols of the German Youth Union previously banned by Hitler. Contrary to the ban, the youth continued to gather, sing songs and fight the Hitler Youth. The center of the association is Cologne, among whose citizens there were about 3,000 "pirates" - teenagers aged 14-18 who had neither a central leader nor a common organizational structure. They wore the edelweiss emblem as an identification mark. After the outbreak of the Second World War, they helped shelter prisoners, Jews and political prisoners, distributed short anti-Hitler leaflets, wrote calls to fight on the walls.
During the war, the "pirates" went underground so as not to be involved in work for the benefit of the German army. In 1944, many members of the group were captured, 13 people were executed, and the rest were sent to concentration camps or to the front. After the end of the war, individual "pirates" continued to organize protests on the territory of East Germany, and the Germans themselves for quite a long time considered the "pirates" more bandits than heroes.
In the 80s, pirates were officially recognized as resistance fighters - albeit with low moral principles. Gertrude Koch - the last "pirate of Edelweiss" - died in 2016. She was 17 when she was first caught by the Gestapo for trying to write anti-Nazi slogans on the wall. She was arrested twice, interrogated and tortured, but somehow she managed to escape and survive. Until the age of 92, she retained a sense of humor and a fighting spirit, telling her family: "Whatever happens, sing!" In 2008, she was awarded a bust of Goine for her work in resisting the regime of the Third Reich.
They warned Stalin about the start of the war
Scattered groups of the German Resistance, connected with Soviet intelligence and transmitting valuable information to it, received the general name "Red Chapel" after the end of the war. The term itself was invented by the SS, who searched for illegal transmitters in Germany. In counterintelligence jargon, radio operators were called "musicians", "pianists", and since there were several transmitters, a whole orchestra or "chapel" was formed. Among the organizers of one of the most famous cells of the Capella were a German journalist and Luftwaffe officer, Harro Schulze-Boysen (Sergeant Major) and lawyer Arvid Harnack (Corsican).
A circle of like-minded people formed around them, bringing together doctors, journalists, economists, artists, dancers and writers with different political views, but a general rejection of the Nazi regime. Since 1933, members of the "Red Chapel" have helped to shelter victims of the regime from persecution, distributed leaflets, collected information about preparations for war and transmitted it abroad. A narrow circle of resistance came into contact with Soviet intelligence. Beginning on June 17, 1941, members of the "Red Chapel" warned the USSR about the impending German attack on the Soviet Union.
During the war years, they listened to Soviet radio stations and, on the basis of reports from the USSR, created leaflets with facts that contradicted Hitler's propaganda, and Schulze-Boysen transmitted data obtained through service in the Luftwaffe to Soviet intelligence officers. In July 1942, the Nazis managed to decipher a previously intercepted radio message from Soviet military intelligence from Moscow to Brussels, where the name of Schulze-Boysen was called and his address. This led to the failure of the group and the arrest of many of its members.
On August 31, the Gestapo arrested Schulze-Boysen. In December 1942, he, his wife Libertas Schulze-Boysen and Arvid Harnak were sentenced to death. Among the group members captured and executed later were Liana Berkovits, a pregnant daughter of Russian emigrants, and Elsa Imme, a German woman. In 1969, the USSR posthumously awarded her the Order of the Patriotic War. In 1943, the Germans seized about 150 members of the Red Chapel movement, of whom about 50 were executed, 7 committed suicide. But it was not possible to completely stop the struggle of the "Red Capella".
Operation Valkyrie
The most famous and large-scale attempt to assassinate Hitler is considered the July 20 conspiracy, organized in the ranks of the Wehrmacht. One of the key organizers of the conspiracy was Klaus Schenck Count of Stauffenberg - an aristocrat, colonel of the Wehrmacht. By the beginning of World War II, he approached the status of the second headquarters general and was sent to Poland, from where he wrote to his wife that "there are a lot of half-breeds in the country, they all need a firm hand and will serve Germany with their forced labor." But, watching the mass shootings of civilians, Stauffenberg changed his views. In 1943 he was badly wounded in Tunisia and lost one eye, right arm and several fingers of his left hand. Having recovered from his injury, in 1943 he came to the conclusion that Hitler was leading the country to disaster, and began searching for like-minded people in the Wehrmacht, which was not accountable to either the Gestapo or the special services.
The conspirators dreamed of killing Hitler. The plan for the assassination of the Fuhrer and the subsequent seizure of power was called "Operation Valkyrie" and appeared after the Allied landings in Normandy, when it became clear that defeat in the war was inevitable. The original plan of the operation was approved by the Fuhrer himself as a procedure for preventing internal unrest in the country. In fact, the plot of the operation of the conspirators included the assassination of Hitler, the arrest of party members and senior officials of the SS, Gestapo and special services, as well as the transfer of power into the hands of the military.
The headquarters leader of the operation was Stauffenberg, who was supposed to commit the assassination and lead the putsch. But the implementation of the operation ran into difficulties - the twice-planned attempt on the life of the Fuhrer had to be postponed, finally, the date of the coup was postponed to July 20. According to the plan, the murder was to take place during a staff meeting. The conspirators planned that the meeting would be held in a bunker, but at the last moment it was moved to a nearby wooden structure, one of the explosive devices did not work, and a suitcase with a bomb left next to the Fuhrer was moved by an absurd accident away from the Fuhrer in the last seconds before the explosion.
The explosion killed four, another 17 people were injured, but the Fuhrer, protected by a massive table, escaped with a minor wound and a concussion. The coup in the capital was also defeated; by the evening of the same day, Stauffenberg was captured and shot. His wife, pregnant with her fifth child, was sent to the Ravensbrück concentration camp, and the children were scattered around the orphanages to erase the memory of the traitor's entire family.
In Germany, the attitude towards Stauffenberg for a long time was very ambiguous: he was called either a hero or a traitor.
On June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany launched Operation Barbarossa: a war against the Stalinist Soviet Union. The attack on the USSR decided the outcome of World War II, it was the end of the Third Reich and Hitler's dream of a "thousand-year empire". Years after this unthinkable nightmare, it is worth remembering that the unilateral and fanatical use of military force led to the deaths of 26-27 million Soviet people.
Arbejderen (Denmark): Great Patriotic War 1941-1945: Operation Barbarossa - German attack on the Soviet Union
World War II through the eyes of Western mediaSeventy-five years ago, on June 22, Hitler ordered his troops to launch Operation Barbarossa: a war against the Stalinist Soviet Union. It was the largest military operation ever carried out, and it remains so to this day. It marked the end of the Third Reich and Hitler's dream of a "millennial empire."
For the Fuehrer, it was an all-or-nothing enterprise that predictably ended in nothing.
The fate of World War II was decided on the Eastern Front. Two-thirds of Germany's resources were used here. During the Cold War, Western propaganda only briefly mentioned the contribution of the Soviet Union to the victory over Germany, respectively, the main attention in the West was paid to the Allied air war, their actions in the Atlantic, North Africa, Sicily and the landing of allied troops in Normandy, followed by an offensive on German territory. ... All these were important events, but the outcome of the war was decided on the Eastern Front.
Hitler began planning Operation Barbarossa shortly after the end of the Western Offensive in the summer of 1940. Any major military operation depends on well-defined goals, a thorough and reliable analysis of the enemy's capabilities, and an equally thorough analysis of one's own resources and capabilities. None of these conditions were met. Therefore, it is completely incomprehensible why none of the German generals dared to go to Hitler and explain the situation to him.
In the German General Staff, several outline plans were developed with different main and secondary goals, directions of the main strikes and operational principles. And even in the final plan, The Case of Barbarossa, there was no agreement on strategic goals. Only the final decision was made. As a result, the operation was stopped, and discussions on strategic goals began, which lasted three weeks from August to September 1941. Unheard of, this was a recipe for operative suicide.
Tank units were withdrawn from the Moscow direction and sent to the south, where they managed to capture Kiev and capture 665 thousand Soviet soldiers. The bill was paid three months later by a disastrous defeat near Moscow. It is well known that the German command did not take care of the winter equipment of its units, which led to the death of hundreds of thousands of German soldiers. Careless planning - Germany did not even develop a "Plan B" - led to the fact that the original goal - the destruction of the strike force of the Red Army - was not achieved. Therefore, the next three years were aimless blind fencing, as the main strategic direction was absent. Hitler wanted to decide everything himself with his crazy ideas, which had absolutely nothing to do with the real world. The Fuehrer was convinced that Providence had chosen him to save Germany as Grösster Feldherr aller Zeiten ("Greatest General of All Time").
Lack of supplies
How did the German military command plan to supply more than three million German soldiers? There was only enough planning for the first three weeks of the trip. Then the invading troops had to "live off the occupied country." After grain and livestock are taken away from the local population, millions of people will be doomed to a long and painful death by starvation. This was part of the planning. It was estimated that 10-15 million people would die of hunger.
From the very beginning, Operation Barbarossa was the catalyst for the "die Endlösung" ("final solution"), the extermination of Jews and other peoples.
Context
SZ: Hitler's War of Destruction
Southdeutsche Zeitung 06/22/2016South German: The Barbarossa Plan Myth
Süddeutsche Zeitung 08/17/2011How Hitler Made Russia a Superpower
The National Interest 06/20/2016Franz Halder - author of The Barbarossa Plan
Die Welt 06/22/2016Multimedia
Great Patriotic War: photo chronicle
Inosmi 22.06.2014Due to the forced collectivization and cleansing of the 1930s, Germans were greeted as liberators in many places. When the Russians saw what fate was in store for them under the rule of the Germans, this benevolence was soon replaced by resistance.
For Hitler, "Barbarossa" was the implementation of his muddled social-Darwinian ideas about the right of the strong to destroy the weak. Here there was no way to unite with groups opposed to the regime, to win over the enemy population, giving them a chance to survive, let alone peace through negotiations. In accordance with the course of the Fuehrer's perverted thoughts, everything had to be decided by the brutal use of force.
The principle of destruction was to be carried out by "Einsatzgruppen" ("Einsatzgruppen", " deployment teams"), Following the advancing military units. The task of these SS and police units was to exterminate Jews and political commissars. The victims were shot in open mass graves. Einsatz groups could only operate with the transport and logistics support of regular troops in this area. This practice was introduced already during the Polish campaign. At the time, the German commander of occupied Poland, Colonel General Johannes Blaskowitz, protested these crimes in writing and refused to support gangs of SS assassins. Blaskowitz was naturally removed from his post, but earned his respect for being decent enough to make such an attempt. I do not know of anyone else who would then try to follow his example.
Prisoners of war
Hitler's directive on the conduct of hostilities on the Eastern Front was characteristic. This war should be different from all previous wars. Here you need to ignore all the laws of war. According to the order of the commissars, representatives of the Communist Party in the Red Army, captured by German units, were to be shot immediately. This order was carried out in different ways depending on the local command, but no one was found to forbid it, although the execution of this order was a clear war crime. In addition, the directive emphasized that German soldiers could not be prosecuted because of the alleged war crimes, which in itself was already a call to the commission of war crimes.
The same attitude was towards Soviet prisoners of war. In 1941 alone, the Germans captured three million Soviet soldiers. Four out of five people did not survive, which in itself is a war crime. In general, no one imagined what to do with so many prisoners. In conditions when not enough attention was paid to the supply of their own units, prisoners of war were not particularly thought about at all, and they died of hunger, thirst, or epidemics that broke out due to the terrible conditions of detention. In winter, many died from the cold while being transported by rail.
Hitler was obsessed with the idea of "Lebensraum" ("living space"), the conquest of territories that could be used for colonization and plunder. At first, the front was 1,500 kilometers long (excluding Finland), but soon it stretched 2,200 kilometers from north to south and 1,000 kilometers in depth from west to east. This was more than the German army of three million with half a million allied troops could handle. The problem worsened as losses grew.
After the defeat near Moscow in 1941-1942, the Germans could carry out major offensive operations only in certain sectors of the front. In 1942, this area became the southern sector of the front, where Hitler's target was the oil fields of the Caspian Sea around Baku. When Stalingrad became another target, the units were stretched out in too thin a chain along the front. As a result, Hitler received neither oil nor Stalingrad. The result of this reassessment of our own forces was the Stalingrad catastrophe of 1942-1943. Hitler's strict order not to break out of the encirclement led to the death of the 6th Army. This was an example that was then repeated more and more often until the very fall of Berlin. Hitler showed that the fate of his soldiers was completely indifferent to him.
Large German losses
After the failed "Operation Citadel" on the Kursk Bulge in July 1943, the German offensive force was exhausted, and from that moment German troops went on the defensive. With great difficulty, it was only possible to evacuate the German units advancing from the Caucasus to the west along the path that was blocked by the advancing units of the Red Army. Hitler prohibited any retreat in all sectors of the front, which led to gigantic losses in manpower and equipment. Likewise, the troops did not withdraw from the Crimean peninsula in time, and in the central sector of the front, the entire Heeresgruppe Mitte (Army Group Center) was completely destroyed in June-July 1944 because Hitler forbade retreat. The cost was the loss of 25 divisions, about 300 thousand soldiers.
In the period from June to September 1944 alone, the losses of the Germans ranged from 1 to 1.5 million people, as well as a huge amount of military equipment. The Red Army henceforth possessed the initiative and had complete freedom of maneuver in conjunction with air supremacy. Hitler further worsened the situation with his absurd orders, which made it impossible to conduct reasonable defensive battles. The generals now had to pay for their helpfulness. Nevertheless, there was strong opposition to Hitler in the military environment. In Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, the opposition found a leader ready to take action.
On July 20, 1944, Stauffnberg was able to plant a mine under a table in Hitler's office in Rastenburg, East Prussia. Unfortunately, the bastard didn't die. Thus, the time of the war extended for another nine terrible months. Hitler took cruel revenge on the conspirators and their families. The failed assassination attempt was a determined attempt to stop the war, which at that moment became completely meaningless. At the same time, she showed that there were decent people among the German officers.
Unprovoked aggression
The attack on June 22, 1941 was an unprovoked aggression and a flagrant violation of the non-aggression pact known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. This pact was Hitler's last attempt to use political and military means in order to secure himself a reliable rear for an attack on Poland. At the same time, it gave effective advantages, since, according to this pact, supplies of raw materials from the Soviet Union went to Germany. They continued until the day of the attack.
The blitzkrieg that Hitler had planned turned into a deadly four-year struggle. Killed 26-27 million Soviet people.
Hitler did not need politics, diplomacy, and trade agreements. He wanted war, and above all a war with the Soviet Union, the Jewish-Bolshevik mortal enemy. He wanted to show that he could win with one military force.
75 years after the start of this unthinkable nightmare, it is worth remembering that Hitler's unilateral and fanatical use of military force led directly to the complete defeat of Germany. This happened despite the fact that Hitler initially had at his disposal the most professional and effective military apparatus of the time.
Another important lesson is that disregard for the laws of war, military conventions and conventional morality, even in conditions of war, is fatal. The execution of individual prisoners of war is becoming a road leading to the murder of millions. The crimes were committed not only by special units of the SS, but also by soldiers of units of the regular army.
Operation Barbarossa became possible only because Hitler arrogated to himself the right to dispose of all means of power without limit. Today we must make sure that war becomes possible only as a result of a transparent and democratic process.
The materials of Inosmi contain assessments exclusively of foreign media and do not reflect the position of the editorial staff of Inosmi.
