Martin Antonenko
A Fixture
- Joined
- Jul 11, 2008
- Messages
- 9,001
The First Day...
On Sunday, June 22, 1941 around 3:15 am, the German border guards at the Bug Bridge near Kodén in the German-occupied part of Poland...
... called their Soviet colleagues to - as they say - "to discuss something important".
When the Soviets obediently approached the Germans, they mowed German soldiers with them
Machine guns down, occupied the bridge, removed the explosives attached to it - and a little later the first vehicles rolled over it.
This is how Hitler's Germany starting the attack to the USSR.
Meanwhile the German Air Force is already on the way ...
... to attack the border airfields of the Soviet air force at dawn - a large part of the Russian aircraft (1,489) is devastated.
On the air bases, the Soviet machines are lined up in a parade under the open sky - a perfect destination for the German Air Force ...:
At the same time the Germans bomb Minsk, Kiev ...
...and Sebastopol...:
When it got light - around 4 a.m. - the commanders of the Red Army units stationed at the border were exposed to massive German attacks from tanks, artillery and infantry, along the entire length of the border.
Defense Commissioner (= Minister) Marshal Semjon Konstantinowitsch Timoshenko ...
… orders the chief of general staff Georgij Shukow…
... to inform Stalin.
Shukow calls the Stalin's dacha in Kunzewo just outside Moscow, where the dictator is currently staying.
The NKVD officer on duty in Kunzewo replied: “Comrade Stalin is sleeping!”. Shukow repeats the urgency of his request and five minutes later Stalin himself is on the line.
Zhukov reports what he knows about this hour and concludes with the words: "Do you understand me, Comrade Stalin ...?"
At the end of the line, he can only hear heavy breathing for several minutes, as Shukow reports in his memoir.
Eventually the “Woshd” ("Leader", as Stalin likes to be called) regained control and orders Shukov to round up the entire Politburo in the Kremlin.
Stalin himself is the first to arrive. He appears pale, exhausted and shocked, but not - as has so often been written - "paralyzed" by the force of the news.
In the past few days and weeks, Stalin had been warned at least 84 times about a German attack in mid-June, but had always dismissed this as British “provocations” intended to drive a wedge between Hitlerite Germany and the Soviet Union.
He still clings to that way of thinking now.
When Timoshenko objects that the bombing of Soviet cities can hardly be described as "provocations", Stalin replies:
"German generals would even bomb their own cities to provoke a conflict."
He mumbles that maybe Hitler didn't know anything about the attacks and demands that contact be made with Berlin immediately.
Foreign Minister Wjacheslaw Molotow ...
... is instructed to clarify the matter as quickly as possible. He rushes back to the State Department.
A little later, the German ambassador Friedrich-Werner Graf von der Schulenburg appears there and asks for an urgent conversation with the Soviet foreign minister.
Graf von der Schulenburg, an old-school diplomat and no friend of the Nazis (he will be executed on November 10, 1944 for his involvement in the events of July 20), hesitantly declares that Germany and the Soviet Union are now at war.
At the end of his speech, Schulenburg bursts into tears.
Molotow replies: "What have we done to deserve this ...?"
After saying goodbye to the ambassador, Molotow hurries back to the Politburo and reports. Stalin takes the news very calmly, sinks into an armchair and, after a long pause, says:
"We will beat the enemy on the whole front!"
At 7:15 am, Stalin issues the first war orders:
The German air force is to be eliminated, Soviet bombers are to fly air strikes 150 kilometers deep into German territory.
The army was ordered to destroy the invading Germans, but not to cross the German border. It was not until evening that the order was given to “take action against the main axes of the German attack and shift the fighting to enemy territory”.
At noon Molotow speaks on the Soviet radio and informs the population about the outbreak of war and admits "200" dead, a grotesque understatement, and calls on the people to "rally even closer to the glorious banner of the Communist Party" ...
Molotow's speech ends with the words:
“Our cause is just, the enemy will be crushed. The victory will be ours."
The next picture shows Muscovites listening to the speech transmitted over loudspeakers ...:
At the front, however, it looks very different:
Stalin's view so far that the enemy will not attack has ensured that even the simplest security measures have not been taken:
There is indescribable chaos!
The commanders don't know what to do.
In the past weeks and months they have been taught every day to behave calmly, defensively and not provocatively.
And now?
Should they shoot back? That could mean being shot in the neck in the NKVD torture cellar for "provocation".
So don't shoot back? That can also mean a shot in the neck - for “defeatism” and treason.
So the commanders try to reassure themselves “above”. But the command posts and means of communication have been bombed or shot to pieces - and if a connection is made, they don't know anything either, because orders from Moscow do not get through.
For fear of border incidents, many of the advanced units of the Red Army have not even been given live ammunition - and are now receiving none, because the bomb attacks immediately collapse the supply system.
In the first four months, the Germans will capture two hundred of a total of 340 Red Army's supply depots.
The Soviet units at the border are simply overrun that day.
At around 7 a.m. the first commanders reported that they had completely lost contact with the units under their command. Whole armies - like the 10 Army - completely disintegrate under the German attacks!
Reinforcements that are hastily thrown forward are deployed "somewhere" without precise knowledge of the situation and bleed to death.
The commander of the "Special Western Military District" (wie der von den Sowjets nach dem Hitler-Stalin-Pakt besetzte Teil Polens genannt wird), Army General Dmitrij Grigorjewitsch Pawlow ...
... was shot for it on July 22nd, 1941 (and not rehabilitated until 1956)!
Only in the old border fortress at Brest-Litovsk ...
... on the German-Soviet demarcation line there is organized resistance that lasts for days, which gives the Germans a foretaste of what is now to come:
350 Red Army soldiers under the command of Major Pjotr Mikhailowitsch Gawrilow ...
... can hold out in bitter battles against a huge superior force until June 29th - until they too have to give up. Very few of his people (sub-units from the Rifle Regiments 125 and 333) survive and are taken prisoner.
Gavrilov was seriously wounded and was taken prisoner after his release in 1945 (in the Soviet Union soldiers who were taken alive were treated as "traitors" on the instructions of Stalin - and treated as such!)
It was not until 1957 that Gawrilow was rehabilitated and awarded "Hero of the Soviet Union".
The next picture shows the warlords Hitler and Mussolini visiting the fallen Brest-Litovsk fortress ...:
On the afternoon of June 22nd, towards the end of the Politburo meeting, Stalin ordered the establishment of a high command "Stawka Glawnogo Komandowanzija" - or "Stawka" for short. (On June 10th, he will appoint himself as defense commissioner in place of Tymoshenko and assume supreme command himself)
In the evening of the day, German troops (as well as their Italian, Romanian, Spanish, Slovak, Finnish and Hungarian relief troops) are already standing deep in the country on all sectors of the front ...
On Sunday, June 22, 1941 around 3:15 am, the German border guards at the Bug Bridge near Kodén in the German-occupied part of Poland...
... called their Soviet colleagues to - as they say - "to discuss something important".
When the Soviets obediently approached the Germans, they mowed German soldiers with them
Machine guns down, occupied the bridge, removed the explosives attached to it - and a little later the first vehicles rolled over it.
This is how Hitler's Germany starting the attack to the USSR.
Meanwhile the German Air Force is already on the way ...
... to attack the border airfields of the Soviet air force at dawn - a large part of the Russian aircraft (1,489) is devastated.
On the air bases, the Soviet machines are lined up in a parade under the open sky - a perfect destination for the German Air Force ...:
At the same time the Germans bomb Minsk, Kiev ...
...and Sebastopol...:
When it got light - around 4 a.m. - the commanders of the Red Army units stationed at the border were exposed to massive German attacks from tanks, artillery and infantry, along the entire length of the border.
Defense Commissioner (= Minister) Marshal Semjon Konstantinowitsch Timoshenko ...
… orders the chief of general staff Georgij Shukow…
... to inform Stalin.
Shukow calls the Stalin's dacha in Kunzewo just outside Moscow, where the dictator is currently staying.
The NKVD officer on duty in Kunzewo replied: “Comrade Stalin is sleeping!”. Shukow repeats the urgency of his request and five minutes later Stalin himself is on the line.
Zhukov reports what he knows about this hour and concludes with the words: "Do you understand me, Comrade Stalin ...?"
At the end of the line, he can only hear heavy breathing for several minutes, as Shukow reports in his memoir.
Eventually the “Woshd” ("Leader", as Stalin likes to be called) regained control and orders Shukov to round up the entire Politburo in the Kremlin.
Stalin himself is the first to arrive. He appears pale, exhausted and shocked, but not - as has so often been written - "paralyzed" by the force of the news.
In the past few days and weeks, Stalin had been warned at least 84 times about a German attack in mid-June, but had always dismissed this as British “provocations” intended to drive a wedge between Hitlerite Germany and the Soviet Union.
He still clings to that way of thinking now.
When Timoshenko objects that the bombing of Soviet cities can hardly be described as "provocations", Stalin replies:
"German generals would even bomb their own cities to provoke a conflict."
He mumbles that maybe Hitler didn't know anything about the attacks and demands that contact be made with Berlin immediately.
Foreign Minister Wjacheslaw Molotow ...
... is instructed to clarify the matter as quickly as possible. He rushes back to the State Department.
A little later, the German ambassador Friedrich-Werner Graf von der Schulenburg appears there and asks for an urgent conversation with the Soviet foreign minister.
Graf von der Schulenburg, an old-school diplomat and no friend of the Nazis (he will be executed on November 10, 1944 for his involvement in the events of July 20), hesitantly declares that Germany and the Soviet Union are now at war.
At the end of his speech, Schulenburg bursts into tears.
Molotow replies: "What have we done to deserve this ...?"
After saying goodbye to the ambassador, Molotow hurries back to the Politburo and reports. Stalin takes the news very calmly, sinks into an armchair and, after a long pause, says:
"We will beat the enemy on the whole front!"
At 7:15 am, Stalin issues the first war orders:
The German air force is to be eliminated, Soviet bombers are to fly air strikes 150 kilometers deep into German territory.
The army was ordered to destroy the invading Germans, but not to cross the German border. It was not until evening that the order was given to “take action against the main axes of the German attack and shift the fighting to enemy territory”.
At noon Molotow speaks on the Soviet radio and informs the population about the outbreak of war and admits "200" dead, a grotesque understatement, and calls on the people to "rally even closer to the glorious banner of the Communist Party" ...
Molotow's speech ends with the words:
“Our cause is just, the enemy will be crushed. The victory will be ours."
The next picture shows Muscovites listening to the speech transmitted over loudspeakers ...:
At the front, however, it looks very different:
Stalin's view so far that the enemy will not attack has ensured that even the simplest security measures have not been taken:
There is indescribable chaos!
The commanders don't know what to do.
In the past weeks and months they have been taught every day to behave calmly, defensively and not provocatively.
And now?
Should they shoot back? That could mean being shot in the neck in the NKVD torture cellar for "provocation".
So don't shoot back? That can also mean a shot in the neck - for “defeatism” and treason.
So the commanders try to reassure themselves “above”. But the command posts and means of communication have been bombed or shot to pieces - and if a connection is made, they don't know anything either, because orders from Moscow do not get through.
For fear of border incidents, many of the advanced units of the Red Army have not even been given live ammunition - and are now receiving none, because the bomb attacks immediately collapse the supply system.
In the first four months, the Germans will capture two hundred of a total of 340 Red Army's supply depots.
The Soviet units at the border are simply overrun that day.
At around 7 a.m. the first commanders reported that they had completely lost contact with the units under their command. Whole armies - like the 10 Army - completely disintegrate under the German attacks!
Reinforcements that are hastily thrown forward are deployed "somewhere" without precise knowledge of the situation and bleed to death.
The commander of the "Special Western Military District" (wie der von den Sowjets nach dem Hitler-Stalin-Pakt besetzte Teil Polens genannt wird), Army General Dmitrij Grigorjewitsch Pawlow ...
... was shot for it on July 22nd, 1941 (and not rehabilitated until 1956)!
Only in the old border fortress at Brest-Litovsk ...
... on the German-Soviet demarcation line there is organized resistance that lasts for days, which gives the Germans a foretaste of what is now to come:
350 Red Army soldiers under the command of Major Pjotr Mikhailowitsch Gawrilow ...
... can hold out in bitter battles against a huge superior force until June 29th - until they too have to give up. Very few of his people (sub-units from the Rifle Regiments 125 and 333) survive and are taken prisoner.
Gavrilov was seriously wounded and was taken prisoner after his release in 1945 (in the Soviet Union soldiers who were taken alive were treated as "traitors" on the instructions of Stalin - and treated as such!)
It was not until 1957 that Gawrilow was rehabilitated and awarded "Hero of the Soviet Union".
The next picture shows the warlords Hitler and Mussolini visiting the fallen Brest-Litovsk fortress ...:
On the afternoon of June 22nd, towards the end of the Politburo meeting, Stalin ordered the establishment of a high command "Stawka Glawnogo Komandowanzija" - or "Stawka" for short. (On June 10th, he will appoint himself as defense commissioner in place of Tymoshenko and assume supreme command himself)
In the evening of the day, German troops (as well as their Italian, Romanian, Spanish, Slovak, Finnish and Hungarian relief troops) are already standing deep in the country on all sectors of the front ...
