The last days before the attack
By mid-June 1941, Wehrmacht troops were stationed on the border of the Soviet Union, on the other side the Red Army forces were concentrated. Against the background of conflicting rumors, on June 13, TASS broadcast on Moscow radio stations a message that the USSR adhered and adhered to a peaceful policy and intends to comply with the terms of the non-aggression agreement signed by the foreign ministers of the two countries. It denotes Vyacheslav Molotov and Joachim von Ribbentrop on August 23, 1939. Information about the preparations for war with Germany was called incorrectly, but at that time there was an active strengthening of the country’s defense.
The message also stated that, according to the Soviet Union, Germany adhered to a similar position and rumors of an impending attack were unfounded.
On the eve of the invasion, on June 21, 1941, the Chief of the General Staff of the Red Army, General Georgy Zhukov, contacted the chief of staff of the Kyiv Special Military District, General Maxim Purkaev. He stated that a German defector informed about the upcoming Wehrmacht offensive on the morning of 22 June. Zhukov handed these data to the People’s Commissar of Defense Semyon Timoshenko, and personally to the chairman of the CPSU Central Committee, Joseph Stalin.
The Secretary General summoned Tymoshenko and Zhukov to the Kremlin, where they announced a draft order to alert the soldiers stationed near the border. According to the memories of historians, Stalin was confused, doubting to the end that Germany would violate the treaty.
But late in the evening, after receiving intelligence about the possible outbreak of war, the Secretary-General added a warning clause to the directive about a potential act of aggression by the German army (and the need to adequately meet it) on 22-23 June. and urges not to succumb to enemy provocations.
The document was then sent to the border military zones.
However, army commanders were allowed to act only within the framework of the points of the directive (deployment and camouflage of aviation, dispersal of troops, alerting air defense systems without an additional increase in assigned personnel, preparing cities and objects for darkening). Other actions that did not have an agreement with the leadership of the USSR were prohibited.
At the same time, the instruction differed from the plan to alert the troops in case of war. Instead of concrete directives, a contradictory instruction was given not to succumb to provocations. Additionally, the directive took several hours to be encrypted and transmitted, and many military formations did not receive any orders when the Nazi invaders attacked.
“June 22, at exactly 4 o’clock…”
Germany attacked the USSR on June 22, 1941 at 3:15 am, without declaring war Ukrainian SSR Kyiv, Zhitomir, Belarusian SSR Grodno, Brest, Lida, Baltic cities, Sevastopol and others were bombed. . Soviet aviation equipment was damaged by the first attacks (1,200 aircraft destroyed, most of them did not blow up), warehouses, ports and railway junctions.
The German infantry general Günther Blumentritt recalled: “what seemed like a miracle happened” after the Wehrmacht artillery opened fire – there was no response from the Soviet troops. The officer and his colleagues were sure that the enemy had been taken by surprise.
However, the USSR Air Force entered the war and managed to eliminate 200 German aircraft.
At about 4 am, the start of hostilities was reported to Stalin. The Secretary General held a meeting and at 7 am Tymoshenko, together with Zhukov, Molotov, and other senior military and government officials, prepared a second directive requiring Soviet soldiers to destroy enemy infantry and aviation.
However, Stalin forbade crossing the border “until further notice”. It was assumed that the war would not have such a wide-ranging character.
On the afternoon of June 22, Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov addressed the citizens of the Soviet Union by radio. In his message, the politician stated that no claims had been made by the enemy before, and announced that the German side had carried out an “unheard of”, “robbery” attack.
“The government of the Soviet Union expresses its unwavering confidence that our valiant army and navy and the brave hawks of Soviet aviation will honorably fulfill their duties to the Fatherland. <...> The authorities express their firm belief that the entire population of our country, all workers, peasants and intellectuals, men and women, will fulfill their duties and work conscientiously.
All our people must be united and united now more than ever before. <...> Our case is justified. The enemy will be defeated. Victory will be ours,” said Molotov.
In his speech to the German people on 22 June 1941, Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler explained that the attack was due to his desire to protect the country from the threat posed by the USSR.
“As Germany removed its troops from its eastern border under the Pact of Friendship and cleared most of the territory of German troops, the concentration of Russian forces had begun on such a large scale that this was only acceptable. A deliberate threat to Germany. I came to the conclusion that the interests of the Reich would be fatally undermined if we left our eastern states defenseless in the face of the strong intensification of Bolshevik divisions,” said the head of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party.
Military successes and defeats
After the start of hostilities, many units of the Red Army declared the alarm on their own, and similarly, decisions were made for retaliatory strikes. The first combat order was given in the early morning by the chief of staff of the Black Sea Fleet, Ivan Eliseev, he ordered the destruction of German aircraft occupying the airspace of the USSR.
After that, military pilots began to crash into enemy aircraft. Of these, 16 were completed on the first day.
On the same day, on June 22, the Brest Fortress was attacked. German soldiers entered there, but Red Army forces repulsed them with a bayonet attack, many of whom fought hand-to-hand. Part of the command personnel died, the Red Army tried to keep the fortress under constant shelling.
A brief combat report released at the end of the day said that “it was not possible to account for casualties”.
When Soviet citizens heard from Molotov’s announcement that the war had broken out, the soldiers were already actively resisting the Wehrmacht: dozens of German tanks were disabled or destroyed, fierce battles were fought on all fronts, the purpose of which was to delay the enemy. and to prevent it from going to deeper lands.
At the same time, some units lost a large number of combat vehicles and personnel. In particular, while meeting with the Western Front forces, Germany destroyed more than 700 Soviet aircraft. At times, it was not possible to create a permanent line of defense due to the late exit to meet the enemy forces – the Wehrmacht stood out thanks to the skill of the army and the quality of its equipment.
The first day of the war revealed a number of shortcomings of the armed forces of the USSR. Thus, the commander of the Western Front, General Dmitry Pavlov, argued that many army commanders acted “raggedly and carelessly.”
“Commanders only start thinking about supplying ammunition when they run out. Meanwhile, a large mass of vehicles are busy evacuating the commanders’ families,” he said.
The Southwestern Front suffered losses in tanks, made an insufficient number of sorties due to communication problems, communication between the combined arms headquarters and aviation headquarters, and the remote location of the airfields from the battlefields.
Martial law was declared in most of the Soviet Union’s European territories, and the authorities also announced the mobilization of citizens responsible for military service, born in 1905-1918, from June 23. A new directive was issued in Moscow demanding a decisive offensive against the German troops.
“We miss my dad so much”
Zinaida Grigorievna Zakharova, 90, a labor veteran and domestic worker, says that her family did not immediately learn of the onset of the war: she, her parents and 4-year-old brother Vasya lived in the village. Vasilkovo, Tver Region. They did not have a radio and the information in the newspapers was published late. The collective farm secretary reported that a few days after the incident began, Germany attacked the Soviet Union.
Zinaida Grigorievna badly remembers the reaction of her relatives and other villagers: in June 1941, she was only 9 years old. But according to him, in the early days, life in the village still went on as usual.
“There was always a job, even a child. At that time, the children began to help with the housework early on: cooking dinner, milking the cows, tidying the house. But then there was much more work: they gathered flax, dug trenches (the Moscow-Leningrad highway passed nearby), everyone, even children. And when they noticed the German planes, they crashed on themselves, ”says the retiree.
He adds that in the evening several people sang ditties or folk songs, and the children gathered to listen to them: other villagers tried to strengthen the spirit and maintain an optimistic mood in a small village.
A little later, Grigory Ivanovich, Zinaida Grigorievna’s father, was taken into battle. From the village of Mednoye he was supposed to go to the front, his wife Anna Ivanovna went to see him off. The children stayed at home, even though they wanted to say goodbye to their father.
“We missed him very much. My mother was always busy, but in the first days after the declaration of war I remember how she found time to read fairy tales to Vasya and me. In general, she always tried to find something that was developing for us, she bought different collections for us if someone offered.
I read all kinds of inspiring stories to make us feel sorry for and proud of the Soviet soldiers. I saw him for the last time before he left,” the old woman recalls.
The family received two letters from Grigory Ivanovich and disappeared near Smolensk a few months later. A famine began in the village: cattle for meat were taken for the army, Anna Ivanovna sometimes managed to buy potatoes for children, she made pancakes from the shells. Milk in the house was thanks to her godmother Zinaida Grigoryevna: she gave the family a goat.
The pensioner remembered: since his father disappeared, his mother often cried. Neither he nor the children found out about his fate – the “funeral” did not come from the front, he also did not return home, and only two or three men returned to Vasilkovo after the victory over Germany.
Grieving for her husband, Anna Ivanovna did not even begin to hang a red flag on the facade of the house in honor of the surrender of the Germans.
“Of course my mother didn’t forget. Wartime is always difficult and it is terrible to remember what we went through. Hunger, tiring work, tears. Thank God, the Germans did not come to our village, as they did back then, they did not carry out executions. And so… The bad is forgotten. Today I already want to live in the present, ”says Zinaida Grigoryevna.
Source: Gazeta
