December 6, 1941 began. “A man is stronger than a tank. Know the Soviet people that you are the descendants of fearless warriors! Know, Soviet people, that the blood of great heroes flows in you, Who gave their lives for their Motherland without thinking about blessings! Know and honor the Soviet people feat

The Germans began the "final" massive attack on Moscow.

On this day, they unexpectedly broke through the defenses of the Soviet troops in the Naro-Fominsk region and rushed north along the highway to Kubinka, to the Minsk-Moscow highway, and south in the direction of Machikhino, to the Kyiv highway. German tanks had already moved towards the capital directly along the Mozhaisk Highway, but they were stopped at the first line. In the area northeast and southwest of Zvenigorod, the Germans penetrated our defenses for 1.5-4 kilometers, by the end of the day they captured the village of Akulovo and reached the Yushkovo area. By December 4, this breakthrough was completely eliminated. On the battlefields, the Germans left 10,000 dead, 50 wrecked tanks, and many other equipment.

The great Russian commander celebrated his 45th birthday George(Egor) Konstantinovich Zhukov(1896-1974), who became Marshal of the Soviet Union, four times Hero of the Soviet Union. He was a different and far from ambiguous person. He could shoot several cowards and alarmists before the formation, or he could reward the brave man before the same formation by removing his order from his uniform. Before a big sudden offensive, when there was no time for demining and it was impossible to attract attention with sorties of sappers, Zhukov ordered infantry to be sent through the minefields: the soldiers, undermining themselves, indicated with their bodies where there was a passage. Then came the tanks. But the authority was colossal: if Zhukov arrived at the front, everyone was animated: an offensive was ahead, and a victorious offensive. Zhukov is the only one of the military leaders who dared to object to Stalin and defend his point of view. Stalin removed him for this on July 30, 1941 from the post of chief of the General Staff, but after Zhukov carried out the first successful and strategically important operation in the Great Patriotic War to eliminate the Elnin ledge (in September), he began to throw him to save the most vulnerable sectors of the front .

General of the Army Georgy Zhukov at one of the sectors of the front.

At the same time, Zhukov took out several carloads of trophies from Germany that he had defeated (194 pieces of furniture, 323 valuable fur skins, 44 carpets and tapestries, 20 unique hunting rifles, 4,000 meters of fabrics, 713 items of silverware, 820 items of tableware and tea utensils, 60 museum paintings, etc., etc.), which was the reason for Stalin, having removed him from his posts, to send him beyond the Urals. Zhukov could write in a note to Zhdanov that the things were bought by him to decorate the Officers' Houses, and the rest was donated by friends. During the period of mass repressions, he could ardently “support the party line” and suggest the names of “unfinished enemies”, or he could stand up for the innocently arrested. But nothing can belittle the role of his personality in Soviet history, since the winners are really not judged. After the war, Georgy Konstantinovich was commander-in-chief of the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany and commander-in-chief of the Soviet administration for managing the Soviet zone of occupied Germany. Then - in the years of disgrace - he commanded the troops of the Odessa and Ural military districts. After the death of Stalin, he was the Minister of Defense of the USSR, and in March 1958 he was dismissed with the right to wear a military uniform. His broad chest was worthily decorated with 6 Orders of Lenin, 2 Orders of Victory, 3 Orders of the Red Banner, 2 Orders of Suvorov 1st Class, the Order of the October Revolution, the Tuvan Order of the Republic and 15 medals of the USSR. In addition, the star of the Hero of Mongolia and 17 foreign orders and medals, including the French Order of the Legion of Honor. Zhukov was awarded the Honorary Arms with the golden image of the State Emblem of the USSR. In terms of awards in the USSR, only Leonid Brezhnev "surpassed" him.

December 2, 1941

By the end of the day, the Germans had penetrated into the defense of the Soviet troops south of Naro-Fominsk for 8-9 kilometers. A German reconnaissance battalion penetrated Khimki, but the next morning was expelled from there by several tanks and a detachment of hastily mobilized residents of the city.

The formations of Guderian's 2nd Panzer Army made a last attempt to capture Tula with a strike from the east, cutting off the railway and highway connecting the city with Moscow. At the same time, the Germans launched an offensive north of Tula from the west. For Tula, December 3rd was the most critical day: the city was threatened with complete encirclement, the Germans were already 15 kilometers north of Tula on the Serpukhov-Tula railway section.

December 3, 1941

Commissar of the partisan detachment Nikolai Petrovich Voden , who before the war worked in the city committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in the city of Rechitsa, Gomel Region, wrote a letter to the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks under the heading “Notes on the causes of our defeats”: “Written between August and the end of November 1941, based on personal observations during life in the occupied regions (Gomel, Orel), conversations with the Red Army, peasants, workers 1. Mass desertion, surrender - there is an unwillingness to fight. All of this is based on the motivation "it will not get worse." Peasants say that taxes in 1941 were increased by 4-5 times, and personal incomes (household plots, side earnings) were cut to a minimum. There was nothing to pay. The vast majority of collective farms never received more than 500 grams of grain per workday, less than this very often. In addition, forced grain purchases, every day growing supplies of milk - it came to milking sheep. You sit half-starved and ragged, and above all, “they also mock us: you, they say, live happily and prosperously” ... Many peasants are oppressed by the abolition of free education. They dreamed of seeing their children educated, and in the name of this they endured a lot... The workers express their dissatisfaction with the law on courts for being late for work (that is, the actual enslavement), the continuous growth of production rates and the equally continuous decrease in real wages. No one, even a highly skilled worker, is able to feed a family ... 2. Until now, the people were confident in our military power and invincibility, but then they suddenly saw what this power was worth, and came to the conclusion: we were deceived, betrayed and sold. They do not believe the numbers of German losses, because people saw how battles were going on before their eyes, and the Soviet troops suffered losses many times more. The mediocrity of many of our generals and, obviously, the absence of a strategic plan for the war on our territory also had an effect. This is noticeable, for example, by the inability to oppose anything to the German tactics of encirclement, by the lack of organization and elementary order in the units ... The population of the occupied regions is especially unfavorable for us from the punctuality of the Germans: their clarity when moving, signs everywhere, endlessly connected. The car lagged behind, immediately a messenger rushes there: what happened? The Germans are very careful about the life of a soldier: until the planes, the guns bomb every hole, the German soldier will not stick his nose out of the trench. It rises to attack under the cover of tanks. And we attack without gun preparation, without tanks, with one heavy machine gun per battalion. Some conclusions. 1. The opinion “it won't get worse” appeared because the leaders of the country forgot (or did not take into account at all) the fact that the socialism we are building will have to be defended by the hands of this generation. Therefore, it was necessary to provide this generation with a minimum of worldly goods, so that it would go to defend not only the future (for which we already shed a lot of blood), but also today's more or less tolerable life. We didn’t have it, but we had numerous difficulties (or, to put it more simply, hunger strikes) with an unclear prospect for the best. 2. The bad work of the NKVD, which broke away from the masses and became not only above them, but also above the party organizations, became obvious. Therefore, the NKVD failed ... to reveal the German plans for a surprise attack. But the NKVD managed to cause ... fear on the part of the population, which did not forget the years 37-38. 3. The press, cinema, radio educated the people in the spirit of "invincibility, the absolute technical and moral superiority of the Red Army", etc. This was necessary, but not to the same extent. The press forced us to believe that the people enthusiastically welcomed the "wise laws" on the trials of workers, on paying for education, on the milking of sheep, etc. no one approved of this friendship). Fulfilling the orders of the Central Committee, the newspapers proved at one time that the aggressors were Germany, Japan, then they became England and France, then again Germany ... And the last "pearls" issued by our press. “The German army is starving” (this is after we brought them bread, butter, and licked ourselves; after the capture of Ukraine by the Nazis!). “The Germans do not have gasoline, metal, the main personnel of their army have been destroyed” (it is not clear how they then almost reached Moscow?). In my opinion, in the future we need to remember two things: first, wars are waged not by governments, but by peoples; the second is that it is impossible to deceive the class (and even more so the people). It is also impossible to defeat the Germans without the people.”

We reprinted this letter almost in its entirety - as a document of the era: what people talked about, what people thought in the first, most terrible months of the war. The fate of Woden himself is unknown. All inquiries from relatives received an answer: in the lists of the dead, those who died from wounds and the missing, he did not appear. This letter was discovered by his daughter, sorting through the papers of her deceased mother. After the war, a woman handed the letter to her mother, and after reading it, you understand that the Stalinist system simply could not leave such a person alive.

The 30th anniversary was met by a participant in the war, private Mikhail Maksimovich Karavaev, one of those ordinary war workers who bore the brunt of the dashing time. Despite the shelling, blizzards and hunger, he carried bread along the Road of Life. And then he reached Koenigsberg. He managed to make war with Japan, so he was demobilized only in July 1946.

December 5, 1941

After our troops pushed the enemy back to positions north of Kubinka and south of Naro-Fominsk, frustrating his last attempt to break through to Moscow, counterattacks in the areas of Dmitrov, Yakhroma, Krasnaya Polyana (20 kilometers from Moscow) and Kryukov forced the Germans to go on the defensive, pushed them in a ledge northeast of Tula (the Germans began to withdraw from the ledge), The counter-offensive of the Red Army near Moscow began(until January 7, 1942). Soviet troops numbered 720 thousand people against 800 thousand of the enemy, 8 thousand guns and mortars against 10,400, 720 tanks against 1,000, 1,170 aircraft against 615, 415 Katyushas. The counteroffensive was launched by the 29th and 31st Kalinin Fronts towards Kalinin. The first 10 days, despite stubborn battles, the armies could not overturn the enemy. The turning point in favor of the Kalinin Front occurred after the troops of the Western Front defeated the German grouping in the Rogachev-Solnechnogorsk region and bypassed Klin.

According to one of the Moscow legends, from the morning of December 5, the Germans stood on the Volokolamsk highway, 33 kilometers from the center of Moscow, there were no our troops to Khimki (on December 2, even a German reconnaissance detachment penetrated there) and a platoon of soldiers freely reached the Sokol metro station. Field Marshal von Bock at 18.00 reported to Hitler about the complete defeat of the Russians. Hitler ordered the same night to enter Moscow. Von Bock asked for a delay until the morning: the soldiers were exhausted, besides, the thaw had come, and everyone was wet. Hitler insisted on carrying out the order. Von Bock convened a meeting at which they decided to violate Hitler's order and enter Moscow in the morning. The night remained. A group of our soldiers marched with the icon of the Mother of God of Kazan (with the same one in front of which Dmitry Pozharsky prayed in the Time of Troubles, and in 1812 - Mikhail Kutuzov) on the western front of the defense that no longer existed, and a miracle happened: an unheard-of frost struck at night - minus 42 degrees. The wet form of the Germans turned into ice. The Mother of God did not let the Nazis into the heart of Russia.

Full of tragedy and courage, the days of the defense of Moscow ... This is about them with severe cruelty a poem by tanker Ion Degen:
My comrade, in death agony
Do not invite your friends in vain.
Let me warm my palms
Above your smoking blood.
Don't cry, don't moan, you're not small
You're not hurt, you're just dead.
Let me take off your boots as a keepsake.
We have yet to advance.

December 6, 1941

The troops of the Western Front under the command of G.K. Zhukov (30th, 1st shock, 20th, 16th and 5th armies - only 100 divisions). The front of the counteroffensive was already 900 kilometers - from Kalinin in the north to Yelets in the south.

Halder would later say that on December 6, 1941, "the myth of the invincibility of the German army was shattered." With the onset of summer, Germany will achieve new victories, but this will not restore the myth of its invincibility.

Before the start of the “final” attack on Moscow, Hitler, addressing the soldiers of the Eastern Front, wrote: “We have Moscow in front of us! For two years of war, all the capitals of the continent bowed before you. You have marched through the streets of the best cities. You have left Moscow. Make her bow down, show her the power of your weapons, walk through her squares. Moscow is the end of the war. Moscow is a vacation. Forward!"

SS Christian Helzer wrote home at the end of October: “When you receive this letter, the Russians will be defeated, we will already be in Moscow, we will march along Red Square. I never dreamed that I would see so many countries. I hope that I will also be present at the parade of our troops in England.

After December 6, a soldier of the 32nd Infantry Regiment, Adolf Fortheimer, sent this letter: “Dear wife! Here is hell. The Russians don't want to leave Moscow. They began to advance. Every hour brings terrible news for us. It is so cold that the soul freezes. You can't go outside in the evening - they'll kill you. I beg you - stop writing to me about the silk and rubber boots that I was supposed to bring you from Moscow. Understand - I'm dying, I'm dying, I feel it.

First in the Air Force guard air regiments became the 29th, 129th, 155th and 526th Fighter Aviation Regiments, the 215th Attack and 31st Bomber Aviation Regiments.

Tank crew junior lieutenant Ermolaev in one battle he destroyed 5 anti-tank guns, destroyed an enemy bunker, two dugouts and destroyed an enemy infantry company.

December 7, 1941

During the counteroffensive near Moscow, the troops of the Western Front liberated Yakhroma, Mikhailov and rushed towards Venev, Stalinogorsk, Epifan. The front-line operational group of Lieutenant General F.Ya. went on the offensive. Kostenko, who dealt the main blow to Livny; troops of the 13th Army of the Southwestern Front started fighting for Yelets.

The headquarters of the German 3rd Panzer Division, which had already been attacked by the troops of the 50th Army since December 3, sent a panicked request by radio to its commander Guderian. Guderian replied: "Burn the vehicles, retreat to the southeast ourselves." On December 8, additional forces descended on Guderian's 2nd Panzer Army, threatening to cut off the enemy's retreat. The entire army of Guderian began to hastily retreat to Uzlovaya and further to Sukhinichi, abandoning heavy weapons, vehicles, tractors and tanks.

Our pilots on the Southern Front shot down 82 German aircraft in twelve days of hostilities, destroyed 147 enemy tanks, 86 guns, 23 mortars, 24 anti-aircraft guns, more than 2,600 vehicles with infantry and military supplies, and exterminated over 8,000 enemy soldiers and officers.

December 8, 1941

The troops of the Western Front liberated the Kryukovo and Krasnaya Pakhra stations near Moscow. Especially fierce battles were going on in the Kryukov area. For two days our tankers and cavalrymen stormed Kryukovo, the village changed hands several times. How many of our soldiers died there is unknown, but, in any case, not like in the song: “A platoon is dying near the village of Kryukovo ...”

Intense fighting on the northern sector of the Western Front does not weaken day or night. Fierce battles take place at every frontier. Taking advantage of the established winter, our troops begin to use skis. Special detachments of skiers penetrate behind enemy lines and disrupt his battle formations.

Nurse Masyutina carried 35 wounded soldiers with their weapons from the battlefield.

December 9, 1941

reconnaissance Nikolai Andreevich Moiseenko the first marked the beginning of the liberation of Tikhvin from the Nazi invaders. On the night of December 8-9, the enemy was driven out of Tikhvin and driven back tens of kilometers to the south. The front advanced 100-120 kilometers, the Nazi plan to completely isolate Leningrad was thwarted, 10 enemy divisions suffered heavy losses.

Escaped from fascist captivity Sergeant Budyansky and red army Kompaneets M., Kapurin G., Sankachev T., Savchenko I., Podgorny I., Boyko S. and others spoke about the unheard-of atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis on captured Red Army soldiers and civilians in the occupied areas: “We were kept in a pit for 4 days, we were not given any food or water. Then they drove to Kremenchug, and from there to the Pavlysh station. The exhausted were shot on the road. In the village of Znamenka, the Germans killed a boy and wounded an old woman for throwing corn to the captured Red Army soldiers. One night we managed to escape. Making our way to our own, we saw how the Nazis brutally cracked down on the population. In the village of Yanovka, the Germans took away all the bread, pigs, cows, chickens, geese and household items from the population. When the Germans began to take the last pig from the collective farmer, whose last name we did not remember, she began to cry. Then the monsters stabbed the woman with a bayonet. In the collective farm "Chervone Selo", going into the courtyard of the collective farmer, the Nazis shot all the ducks from machine guns. The collective farmer could not stand it and asked them to stop shooting. She was shot immediately. In the village of Tymmi, the Germans killed a boy because he approached the German tanks. In the village of Sofiyivka, the Nazis shot 50 women and children for the murder of one Italian officer.

December 12, 1941

Heroic feat done red Army soldier Syplepov. In battle, he set fire to 2 German tanks with flammable liquid bottles, destroyed a machine-gun nest with grenades along with the crew, and exterminated 10 German soldiers.

The participant of the 1st World War, Civil and Patriotic Wars met the 45th anniversary Vasily Nikolaevich Gordov(1896–1950), commander of the 21st Army, Stalingrad Front, 33rd and 3rd Guards Armies. Hero of the Soviet Union, Colonel General. After the war, he was arrested on a falsified criminal case and shot.

The 30th anniversary of the Soviet writer met Evgeny Zakharovich Vorobyov

(1911–1990), during the war he served as a special correspondent for the front-line newspaper Krasnoarmeyskaya Pravda.

December 13, 1941

Soviet troops approached Kalinin and Klin and offered the German garrisons to surrender. They rejected the ultimatum, but hurried to retreat, having set fire to many buildings. Elsewhere, the German retreat was more like a stampede. To the west of Moscow and in the Tula region, the roads for many kilometers were strewn with abandoned guns, trucks, tanks stuck in the snow. Writer Elena Rzhevskaya, who in those days served as an interpreter at the front, recalled: “The retreat of the freezing, snow-covered hordes was like the exodus of Napoleon's army. On the way to the front, I saw Guderian's formidable tanks rolled away from Moscow, abandoned, knocked out, crushing Europe with their tracks and threatening Moscow. Two German formation commanders died during those days of retreat. The commander of the ground forces, Brauchitsch, was forced to resign. Guderian was recalled and disgraced. Hitler admitted to Goebbels that the retreat of his army, which had suffered a defeat on the outskirts of Moscow, was a nightmare for him and that “if he (Hitler) had shown weakness even for a moment, the front would have turned into a landslide, and such a catastrophe would have approached that would have pushed Napoleon’s far into the shade. It was to this time that the appearance in Soviet folklore of the image of the "winter German", wrapped in women's scarves stolen from civilians, fur boas and with icicles hanging from red noses.

The Pravda newspaper published the first victorious report of the Sovinformburo, which talked about the failure of the German attempts to surround Moscow and talked about the first successes of the Soviet counteroffensive. The newspaper printed portraits of the generals who won the battle for Moscow: G.K. Zhukova, D.D. Lelyushenko, V.I. Kuznetsova, K.K. Rokossovsky, L.A. Govorova, I.V. Boldin, F.I. Golikova, P.A. Belova and, by the way, A.A. Vlasov. As rightly wrote A.I. Solzhenitsyn, Vlasov was one of the most successful generals at the beginning of the war, as the commander of the 99th Infantry Division, he recaptured Przemysl and held the city for 6 days, this division was not taken by surprise on June 22; being later the commander of the 37th army near Kyiv, he left the encirclement and then became the commander of the 20th army near Moscow, which struck the first blow there.

The crew of the BT-7 tank of the 27th armored division of the 20th mountain cavalry division, while on patrol 1.5–2 kilometers from the village of Denisikha (Kubinka region), destroyed three German Pz.III tanks, two of them by ramming . The tank was in ambush, at the edge of the forest. Having found two German tanks emerging from the forest, the tankers set fire to one with cannon fire, and decided to ram the second.

The blow fell on the drive wheel, the caterpillar burst at the "troika". At the BT-7 tank, the engine did not stall, and the tankers, dragging the enemy tank by the skid, threw it off the cliff into the river. Then BT-7 returned to its original position. At this time, another T-3 came out of the forest and stopped at the first lined "German". The BT-7 ran out of armor-piercing shells, and they also decided to ram this tank. Upon impact, the German's drive wheel was cut off and the caterpillar burst, and the engine of the BT-7 stalled. Having started the engine on the fourth attempt, ours fired high-explosive shells several times at the German tank "for persuasiveness", and returned to the starting point.

During the war, cases of ramming tanks by tanks were not isolated, however, for ramming our tankers used heavier vehicles - T-34 and KV. This case is unique. It is surprising precisely in that our tankers successfully rammed a heavier and better protected enemy in a fairly light (both in terms of weight and armor) vehicle.

Collective farmers of the districts Tula region, liberated by the Soviet troops from the Nazi invaders, help the Red Army and Soviet partisans to crush the enemy. So, a group of collective farmers from the village of Brykovo covered the road with snow, along which a unit of German motorcyclists was retreating. German motorcycles crashed into a snow blockage at full speed.

Fire on the enemy. 1941

The Nazis abandoned their cars and fled through the surrounding forests. On December 13, not far from the village of Dubna, collective farmers, armed with pitchforks and stakes, attacked a group of German soldiers and put them into a stampede. The workers of the Koptevsky state farm, armed with rifles and machine guns recaptured from the Germans, together with the Red Army soldiers of one of the units, participated in the battle in which many Germans were exterminated.

December 15, 1941

In order to cut off the Germans' escape route from Klin, on the night of December 15, an airborne assault force (415 people) was thrown into the Teryaeva Sloboda area. The paratroopers intercepted the road to Teryaeva Sloboda, destroyed bridges, destroyed communication lines. Throwing equipment, the enemy had to retreat along country roads. Only separate groups managed to break through from Klin to the west. Unfortunately, this was perhaps the only operation of its kind during the first stage of the Soviet counteroffensive near Moscow.

During the performance of a combat mission, a Soviet military pilot, aviation lieutenant died Georgy Terentyevich Nevkipely(1913–1941), graduate of the Kachinskaya military aviation school, participant in the Soviet-Finnish and Great Patriotic Wars. Squadron commander of the 65th Assault Aviation Regiment (Moscow Defense Zone), he made 29 sorties near Moscow, destroyed several enemy tanks, 250 vehicles with infantry and burned 7 enemy aircraft. Posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

Troops General Lelyushenko in one day of fighting with the enemy, they captured 8 German tanks, 6 guns, 16 machine guns, 58 vehicles and other trophies.

Ten Red Army soldiers under the leadership junior political instructor Polyansky in one battle they destroyed 75 fascists, while losing three people wounded.

The Pravda newspaper publishes:

“A wonderful film about the parade will be seen by the whole country. For twelve days on the screens of the nine largest cinemas in Moscow, the film "Parade of our units on Red Square in Moscow on November 7, 1941" is shown with great success. The film delights the audience. Cinema halls are full. For 11 days, cinemas showing this film were visited by about 300,000 Muscovites. By December 12, 300 copies of the picture were printed ... To Leningrad, Kuibyshev. Tbilisi, Novosibirsk sent countertypes of the film for reproduction of copies of the film on the spot and distribution to the periphery; from Novosibirsk to the eastern regions, from Tbilisi to the republics of Transcaucasia. The Film Committee is taking steps to distribute the film widely throughout the country.”

December 17, 1941

As a result of the fighting in the Yasnaya Polyana area, our fighters captured 11 German tanks, an armored car, 119 cars, 9 cars, 16 motorcycles, 208 bicycles, 37 guns, 43 machine guns, 21 mortars, 46 horse carts, one aircraft, 48300 shells, 55 boxes of mines and 150,000 rounds of ammunition.

An outstanding Soviet pilot became a Hero of the Soviet Union Alexander Petrovich Silantiev(1918–1996), participant in the war, who made 203 sorties by December 1941. In 35 air battles he shot down 8 enemy aircraft. After the war, after graduating from two military academies, he served as deputy commander-in-chief of the Air Force. Air Marshal.

Our gunners knocked out an enemy tank. The Nazi tankers got out of the car and tried to hide in the forest. Red Army signalman Pomosov under a hurricane of enemy artillery fire, he ran up to the tank, jumped into the hatch and, turning the turret, shot the fleeing fascists with well-aimed machine-gun bursts.

December 18, 1941

On the outskirts of Volokolamsk, near the village of Goryuny, a tankman, senior lieutenant, took the last battle Dmitry Fedorovich Lavrinenko(1914–1941). Attacking the enemy who broke through our positions, he destroyed his 52nd German tank, 2 anti-tank guns and up to fifty German soldiers. On the same day, after the battle, Dmitry Lavrinenko was hit by a mine fragment.

For two and a half months of fierce fighting, the tank hero took part in 28 battles and destroyed 52 Nazi tanks. He became the most productive tanker in the Red Army, but did not become a Hero. December 22, 1941 was awarded the Order of Lenin.

Already in peacetime, numerous submissions for the hero's award at the highest levels (Marshal Katukov, General of the Army Lelyushenko) had an effect on bureaucratic routine. By decree of the President of the USSR of May 5, 1990, for the courage and heroism shown in battles with the Nazi invaders, Lavrinenko Dmitry Fedorovich was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

The Pravda newspaper publishes:

“Having broken through the enemy’s line of defense in the areas of Aleksin – Tarusa – Volkovskoye, units of Commander Zakharkin launched an offensive on a wide sector of the front. Over the past day, our troops have liberated up to 60 settlements from fascist invaders. The German beasts retreating in panic, leaving the villages, burn houses, shoot civilians, torture the elderly and children, and torture wounded Red Army soldiers. In the village of Spasskoye, fascist bandits shot 10 wounded Red Army soldiers. In the village of Rakitino, the Germans staged a brutal massacre of the chairman of the local village council, Elena Savelyevna Shiryaeva. Having gathered the entire population of the village, the Germans hung Shiryaeva by the legs and mocked her for a long time. When Shiryaeva tried to free the noose, the fascist monsters cut off her hands and shot Shiryaeva's infant son before her eyes.

The participant of the Soviet-Finnish and Patriotic wars met the 20th anniversary Yuri Vladimirovich Nikulin(1921-1997), who later became an outstanding Russian circus and film artist, a great clown, People's Artist of the USSR, Hero of Socialist Labor.

December 19, 1941

A 38-year-old commander of a cavalry corps, major general, Hero of the Soviet Union, died in a battle near Ruza, near Moscow Lev Mikhailovich Dovator(1903–1941). At the beginning of the war, he commanded a cavalry group, made several raids on the rear of the enemy, disorganizing his defenses. During the Battle of Moscow, he commanded the Guards Cavalry Corps, which distinguished itself with unparalleled valor during the most difficult period of the defense of Moscow in the autumn-winter of 1941. During one of the battles on December 19, 1941, in the area of ​​Ruza near Moscow, the Cossacks lay down; their attack is about to choke. And then, dismounting, Dovator crawled like a plastunsky into the chain of fighters. In the frosty air his voice sounded loudly: "Communists - forward!". The general stood up to his full height, and suddenly there was a heavy fire of enemy machine guns. A day later (December 21) he was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

The enemy at dawn, after strong artillery and mortar preparations, resumed the attack on Sevastopol. Continuous fighting with increasing force continued throughout the day. The defenders of the city resisted fiercely. So, on the site of the 8th Marine Brigade, the chief of staff of the brigade, Major A.K. Kerner, company commanders, Captain S.S. Sleznikov, and senior lieutenant D.F. The commander of the brigade, Colonel E. I. Zhidilov, was seriously wounded.

The Pravda newspaper publishes:

"Southwestern Front. Retreating under the pressure of our units, the Germans took with them an old collective farmer Comrade. Spiridonov and offered him to show the way. Spiridonov led the Germans out of the village at night and said: “I don’t know the way, I forgot ...” The barbarian fascists shot Spiridonov, a valiant Russian patriot. Our people will not forget his feat, his boundless love for the motherland.

December 20, 1941

The Red Army liberated Volokolamsk after bloody battles. There was a gallows in the central square of the city. They had already managed to remove the bodies from it: local residents said that the executed people hung for a month - the Germans did not allow them to be buried.

During the month-long occupation of the city, the Nazis burned 126 captured soldiers alive, shot and killed 86 civilians, hanged eight Komsomol members from Moscow, destroyed and burned seven industrial enterprises, about 100 residential buildings and institutions.

Eight Red Army scouts, led by platoon commander Karamendinov penetrated behind enemy lines and organized an ambush along the road. Soon 4 vehicles with 80 German soldiers appeared. Brave Soviet soldiers, throwing grenades at the enemy, exterminated over 20 Nazis. Having destroyed several more Germans in the ensuing skirmish, the scouts skillfully left the battle and returned to their unit without loss.

December 21, 1941

The troops of the right wing of the Western Front reached the line of the Lama and Ruza rivers, where until December 25 they fought with the enemy. The mobile group of the 50th Army broke into Kaluga and started street fighting with the German garrison.

An outstanding Soviet military leader, the legendary commander of the Patriotic War celebrated his 45th birthday Konstantin Konstantinovich Rokossovsky(1896-1968), who was among the first creators of our victory. The troops under his command distinguished themselves in the battle of Smolensk, the battles near Moscow, Stalingrad, Kursk and other operations. Twice Hero of the Soviet Union, Marshal of the Soviet Union and Marshal of Poland. He was Minister of National Defense and Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of Poland, Deputy Minister of Defense of the USSR. Awarded 7 orders of Lenin, 6 orders of the Red Banner, the highest military order "Victory".

December 22, 1941

Every day the combat score of a sniper of the 54th Infantry Regiment (25th Infantry Division (Chapaevskaya), Lieutenant Lyudmila Mikhailovna Pavlichenko(1916–1974). And in total, by July 1942, she destroyed 309 Nazis. During the defensive battles, she trained dozens of good snipers, who, following her example, exterminated more than one hundred Nazis. She was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union on October 25, 1943. A street in Sevastopol is named after her.

In the battle for the village of Harino, a Soviet tanker comrade Fomichev with the tracks of his tank, he destroyed an enemy anti-tank gun and about 160 German soldiers. Tank comrade Pugacheva suppressed in the same battle 2 anti-tank guns and exterminated 90 German soldiers and officers. tank commander senior sergeant Baranbay with well-aimed fire destroyed 4 German vehicles, 4 machine guns and a platoon of enemy infantry.

Heroic Soviet women, helping the Red Army to destroy the Nazi invaders, join the ranks of the Red Cross combatants. Only the Moscow regional organizations of the Red Cross during the war trained 3,000 combatants and nurses. Most of them successfully work in the headquarters of the MPVO, at the front, in ambulance trains and hospitals.

Recently, fascist planes dropped bombs on the ambulance train No. 100. Despite the imminent danger, the combatants carried seriously wounded soldiers out of the cars and hid them in the forest. Druzhinnitsa Vera Isaeva covered the wounded soldier with her body from fragments of enemy bombs. Being herself wounded, comrade. Isaeva continued to save the fighters. Vigilantes of the Klinsky district Marusya Karivanova, Claudia Rogozhina and others saved the lives of 50 people by carrying them out of the burning house. The combatants of the Dmitrovsky district, the Moscow region, work just as selflessly. Utkin, Chekunova, Shirokov, Emelyanova and many other patriots of the Soviet country.

December 23, 1941

For several days, the 350th Rifle Division of the Kalinin Front fought hard at Selizharovo, north of Rzhev. A participant in those battles, T. Pilipenko, described the completely unprepared battle of her division as follows: “The rifles did not fire (they did not have time to remove the factory grease from them), and the Germans fired heavily from machine guns. Shouts, obscenities, curses… The commander was stupid and stubborn, drove battalion after battalion… Ask those who were rising from the trenches what they were shouting (certainly not toasts to the leader. And some words are uncomfortable to write).”

Famous Belarusian partisan celebrates 50th birthday Minai Filippovich Shmyrev(1891–1964), who became the organizer of the partisan movement in Belarus during World War II. His detachment included cardboard workers, and Shmyrev himself, after the detachment, commanded a partisan brigade (1st Belorussian) and worked at the Central Headquarters of the partisan movement, for which he was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, four Orders of Lenin and became an honorary citizen of Vitebsk.

The Pravda newspaper publishes:

“Having captured Latvia, the Germans expected meek obedience from the Latvian people. But the invaders miscalculated cruelly. Latvian soldiers and officers fought shoulder to shoulder with the soldiers and commanders of the Red Army against the German invaders. Latvians also took part in the battles near Moscow. The Latvian division showed what the people of this wonderful, proud and freedom-loving people are capable of.”

December 24, 1941

Kalinin front. Fighters and commanders show examples of heroism, courage, military prowess in fierce battles.

Senior Lieutenant Romadin made his way with fifteen fighters to the enemy rear. He discovered a German convoy, near which up to 70 soldiers had accumulated. Romadin with his fighters quietly crept up to the enemy. From a distance of 150 meters, fire was opened from machine guns and rifles. 15 Nazi soldiers were killed, the rest fled. Our group had no losses.

Junior commander Tokarev and red army soldier Sidorov under a hail of bullets, they crawled up to the barn, where an enemy machine gun was installed. Brave Soviet soldiers threw grenades at the Germans and destroyed the entire machine-gun crew. Platoon leader of the same unit comrade Tukhovlen with a group of fighters, he made his way during the attack to the dugout where the Germans were. The Red Army soldiers threw grenades at the enemy, killed four Nazis and seized a machine gun.

Part-commander Communist Ivanov, twice wounded, still did not leave the battlefield, and only after the third wound was evacuated. Komsomol sergeant Chuev was instructed to lay a line of communication. On the way to Chuev and Red Army soldier Hilles attacked by fascist submachine gunners. Chuev ordered Hilles to deliver the cable to the unit, and he himself began to shoot back from the pressing enemies. He was wounded in the leg. Pulling it with a belt, he continued to shoot. The Germans surrounded Chuev when he was already running out of bullets and offered to surrender. Preferring death to the disgrace of captivity, the communications hero fired the last bullet into his temple.

December 26, 1941

The Kerch-Feodosiya landing operation began - the first significant landing operation of the Soviet troops during the Great Patriotic War. From December 26 to 31, the ships of the Black Sea Fleet, the Azov military flotilla landed about 40 thousand people, 43 tanks, 434 guns and mortars in the north and east of the Kerch Peninsula. The Kerch enemy grouping was 25 thousand people - the main German forces in the Crimea were concentrated near Sevastopol. The initial impact force of our troops was impressive. Together with units of the Crimean Front, the paratroopers advanced more than 100 kilometers west and already on December 30 liberated Kerch and Feodosia.

The Pravda newspaper publishes:

"The hero of the USSR captain Basov, performing a combat mission, with his tank rammed 4 heavy and 7 light tanks of the enemy, crushed a camouflaged aircraft with caterpillars, destroyed up to a hundred Nazis. The Germans managed to set fire to the hero's car. Without leaving the burning tank, the crew continued to strike at the enemy and died a heroic death along with their fearless commander.

The paramedics provided great assistance to the troops. Carried out from the battlefield and provided first aid to 40 wounded that day by a nurse of the 4th battalion of the 7th Marine Brigade Lydia Nozenko. medical instructor Natasha Lapteva took out from the battlefield more than 30 wounded with weapons, and in just four days of fighting -90 (!) People. Heroically behaved nurse sapper battalion Klava Shchelkunova. Once surrounded with a group of wounded, the girl boldly entered into a fight with the Nazis and managed to bring the wounded to the location of the unit.

Soviet military pilot celebrated his 25th birthday Nikolai Fyodorovich Kuznetsov(1916–2000), who later became a Hero of the Soviet Union, Honored Military Pilot of the USSR, Doctor of Military Sciences, Major General of Aviation, Head of the Cosmonaut Training Center.

The counteroffensive of the Soviet troops in the battle of Moscow. Soldiers in camouflage go on the attack in a village near Moscow, occupied by Nazi troops.

December 27, 1941

Hero of the Soviet Union became a junior lieutenant Nikolay Vasilievich Oplesnin(1914–1942), participant in the war. Assistant Chief of the Operations Department of the 111th Infantry Division (52nd Separate Army), he, being surrounded on September 20, 25 and 29, 1941, swam the Volkhov (Novgorod Region), conducted reconnaissance of the area, which contributed to the exit from the encirclement of his entire division . Killed in battle.

Unit machine gunners junior lieutenant Shandur in one of the battles, 100 enemy soldiers were exterminated and 5 cars, several motorcycles and 30,000 rounds of ammunition were captured. The next day, the fighters of the Shandur unit captured another 26 vehicles, a medium tank, 2 tractors, a heavy gun, 3 machine guns and a large amount of ammunition.

December 28, 1941

By December 28, senior pilot of the 3rd aviation squadron of the 57th assault aviation regiment of the 8th bomber aviation brigade of the Air Force of the Red Banner Baltic Fleet junior lieutenant Alexei Efimovich Mazurenko(1917–2004) completed 45 sorties. Personally and in a group, he destroyed 10 tanks, 18 armored vehicles, 115 vehicles, 1 heavy gun, 9 field artillery guns, 14 anti-aircraft guns, 17 anti-aircraft machine-gun points, 22 wagons, 10 tanks, a lot of enemy manpower. By decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of October 23, 1942, the pilot was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

Telephonist Ulyana Potapenko repairing line damage under enemy fire.

From January 1944 until the end of the war - commander of the 7th Guards Assault Aviation Regiment of the 9th Assault Aviation Division of the Air Force of the Red Banner Baltic Fleet. By August 17, 1944, he made 202 successful sorties. He personally sank 8 enemy ships (5 transports and 3 minesweepers) and 22 as part of a group (6 transports, 6 minesweepers, 1 patrol ship, 2 high-speed landing barges, 7 patrol boats). He also destroyed a large number of military equipment on land personally and as part of a group - 21 tanks, 185 vehicles, 18 armored vehicles, 33 anti-aircraft guns, 9 field guns, 33 wagons and other equipment. On November 5, 1944, Lieutenant Colonel A.E. Mazurenko was awarded the title twice Hero of the Soviet Union.

The participant of the Soviet-Finnish and Patriotic wars, the Soviet military pilot met the 30th anniversary Evgeny Petrovich Fedorov(1911–1993). He successfully delivered bombing strikes on concentrations of enemy troops in the Crimea, twice became a Hero of the Soviet Union, Major General of Aviation.

The 25th anniversary was met by a participant in the battles on the Khalkhin-Gol River and the Patriotic War Vasily Andreevich Voronin(19161944), who later became a Hero of the Soviet Union, Major of the Guards. The commander of the battalion of the 37th Guards Rifle Regiment (Central Front), at the end of September 1943, in the battles for the liberation of the Chernihiv region, he knocked out the enemy from 6 settlements, knocked out 3 tanks, quickly crossed the Dnieper, captured a bridgehead, expanded it in fierce battles and held before the approach of the main forces of the regiment. The hero died of his wounds.

December 29, 1941

On December 25, 1941, the Feodosia-Kerch landing operation began, which aimed to help the troops of the besieged Sevastopol, and, if possible, its release. On December 26, tactical landings were landed on the Azov coast, and in the morning of the 29th, impudently, mooring at the berths of Feodossia captured by the Nazis, in front of the Germans, cruisers and transports began landing an advanced landing force directly into the port of the occupied city. A little earlier, at 3.30 am, the Koktebel landing force was landed from the D-5 Spartakovets submarine. Simultaneously with the Koktebel landing, a landing was planned in the settlement. Sarygol, however, due to the lack of watercraft, the Sarygol landing was canceled.

The Koktebel landing was considered a distraction - the reconnaissance group of sailors was tasked with tying up the Koktebel garrison in battle so that it could not provide any assistance to the German and Romanian troops in the Feodossia region. Only volunteers were recruited into the landing. As one of the landing participants later recalled: “None of us really hoped to survive then, but I really wanted to help the brothers in Sevastopol.”

The enemy garrison of Koktebel, fearing a new landing in their area, took up defensive positions and did not take any active actions, which is what the Black Sea people actually wanted. By the end of January 1, the Soviet troops, developing the offensive, reached Koktebel and the Red Navy got the opportunity to join the main forces. At that time, about ten people remained alive, almost all were injured. On January 2, the offensive of our troops stopped, and the wounded soldiers were cast to the rear. Until the end of the war, three participants in this landing survived - G.D. Gruby, M.E. Lipai and, apparently, V. Osievsky. After the war, in honor of the feat of the heroes-sailors, the central street of the village. Koktebel (also known as Planerskoye) was renamed the street of paratroopers.

The Koktebel landing completely completed the task - with minimal forces, it pinned down the enemy garrison and did not allow it to come to the aid of its troops on the Kerch Peninsula, or any other actions to

interfere with our troops conducting the Feodosia-Kerch landing

operation. Unfortunately, the situation at the end of 1941 was still such that it was necessary to massively resort to operations such as "distracting landings", in which the chances of participants to survive tended to zero.

December 30, 1941

The Red Army liberated Kaluga after fierce fighting. At dawn, Soviet troops stormed the station, which was turned by the Germans into a fortress. The Germans fought desperately hard.

During the occupation and fighting in the city, almost all industrial enterprises, 495 buildings of cultural and community institutions, 445 residential buildings were destroyed. The Germans plundered the house-museum of K.E. Tsiolkovsky, destroyed the archive of the scientist, and stole models of rockets.

Red Army cooks Chadin and Ivanov were surrounded by ten German machine gunners. Brave Red Army soldiers went into battle with the enemies. Tov. Chadin stabbed 3 German soldiers with a bayonet, and comrade. Ivanov shot the officer, the rest of the enemies fled.

December 31, 1941

The troops of the Western Front liberated the city of Belev.

By December 31, the Red Army had lost 2,993,803 people killed and 1,314,291 wounded since the beginning of the war (a total of 4,308,094 people). According to some sources, 2 million people were captured, according to others - 3.9 million. Almost the entire first strategic echelon, the most trained personnel troops, perished. In addition, the Red Army lost more than 6 million small arms (67 percent of what was available on June 22, 1941), 20 thousand tanks and self-propelled artillery mounts (91 percent), 100 thousand guns and mortars (90 percent), 10 thousand aircraft (90 percent), the total loss of ammunition amounted to 24 thousand wagons.

During the same period, the Germans lost 750 thousand (according to other sources 830 thousand) killed and wounded on the Eastern Front.

On the Leningrad front, a branch senior sergeant Zaforozhan attacked two enemy wood-and-earth firing points and destroyed several dozen German soldiers in them. In the battle for the village of Novoselki, the detachment captured 4 enemy anti-tank guns and immediately opened fire from them on the retreating enemy. Accurate fire destroyed about a company of German soldiers and officers.

They came to Central Russia in December very coldy- the temperature reached minus 42 degrees, besides there was a strong wind. The German troops distributed a “Reminder about great colds” with a lot of advice: “Specially protect the lower abdomen from the cold with a lining of newsprint between the undershirt and sweatshirt. Put felt, a handkerchief, crumpled newsprint or a garrison cap with a balaclava in a helmet ... Armlets can be made from old socks. The Germans froze terribly and warmed themselves, as best they could, taking things from the population. A few lucky ones got peasant sheepskin coats, urban wadded coats or ladies' boas. But usually the German soldiers looked like this: the heads of the soldiers were tied with women's scarves, some wore children's bonnets under black helmets, weaved huge boots from straw. In the second military winter, the Germans were already dressed in warm quilted overalls.

After the war, the German generals unanimously began to say that the reason for the defeat near Moscow was first the mud, and then the terrible frosts that struck. It would be extremely naive to believe that mud or cold did not cause any inconvenience to our troops: our soldiers with the same difficulty pulled equipment stuck in the muddy ground and froze in the same overcoats. The army was dressed in sheepskin coats only the following winter; in the winter of 1941/42, officers and a few lucky ones had them.

The Nazis in the occupied Soviet territories have destroyed 500,000 Jews since the beginning of the war.

In terms of the number of troops involved and the number of losses inflicted, the Battle of Moscow is one of the largest during the Great Patriotic War. During this period, a series of operations falls, which began with the defensive stage of the actions of the Soviet troops on September 30, 1941. On that day, the German command, having launched an offensive by the second tank group in the Bryansk direction, began the Typhoon operation to capture Moscow, in which the Center Army Group participated.

On October 2, German troops went over to battles in the Vyazma direction, and later, according to reports, they were already in Mozhaisk, Volokolamsk and Maloyaroslavets, where troops under the command of an army general, a colonel general and a lieutenant general met the enemy.

At that time, the Soviet troops were in an extremely difficult situation. Hitler remembered how quickly France submitted to him after the capture of Paris in 1940, which ended with the capture of Oslo, Belgrade, Copenhagen, and desperately rushed to Moscow.

In early October, on the outskirts of Moscow, firing points were hastily built, anti-tank fortifications were installed.

“What each of us felt and experienced in those days, I would put it this way: no one wanted to believe that Moscow would be in the hands of the enemy, but it was not easy to prove even to ourselves that we have enough strength to stop the fascist invaders at the gates of the capital, ”wrote the Commissar of the Navy in his memoirs. In mid-October, the situation seemed to be the most critical: there was an evacuation, mobilization of people for the construction of fortifications, important military installations were mined. On October 19, at a meeting of the State Defense Committee, a resolution was adopted on the introduction of a state of siege in Moscow and adjacent areas.

“Our newspapers in those days called for a decisive end to carelessness and complacency and directly wrote that the very existence of the Soviet state was under threat,” recalled Nikolai Kuznetsov.

Preparing for a counteroffensive

Numerous counterattacks, the introduction of reserves and air strikes by the Soviet troops still exhausted the enemy. The holding of a short military parade on Red Square on November 7, 1941 also occupies a special page in history. Then, being under siege, when the enemy was very close to the city, Muscovites heard that the morale of the Soviet troops was not broken, Moscow would not surrender.

Enemy strikes were repulsed also thanks to the continuous accumulation of reserves. Throughout the battle, naval formations also participated in the army formations: the 75th naval rifle brigade was deployed along the Volokolamsk highway, and a special naval regiment operated on Mozhaisk. In this case, the commanders of naval rifle brigades with at least some experience of command on land were appointed to lead formations and units of sailors.

“At the front, the differences between sailors and army men were quickly erased. Unless only the naval words “brotherhood” and “polundra” and the biting sayings of the boatswain addressed to the Nazis spoke of the fact that the marines were fighting here.

Loyalty to maritime traditions was also manifested in the fact that at the decisive hour the sailors invariably went into battle in striped vests so that the enemy knew who they were dealing with! - wrote Nikolai Kuznetsov.

At the end of November 1941, when German troops captured Tula from the east, tried to force the Moscow-Volga canal and close the ring around the capital, the 71st Marine Rifle Brigade of the Pacific Fleet arrived at the front (as part of the 1st Shock Army, formed from Siberians, Urals and Pacific sailors). On December 1, near the village of Yazykovo, Dmitrovsky district, the brigade met the enemy, and only by December 6 the village was liberated. On the spot, several sets of parade uniforms were found in the German headquarters van.

From the prisoners it became known that the German officers had prepared them for the parade in Moscow.

In early December 1941, Soviet troops near Moscow numbered 1.1 million people, 7.65 thousand guns and mortars, 774 tanks and 1 thousand aircraft. At the same time, the enemy had over 1.7 million people at his disposal, about 13.5 thousand guns and mortars, 1.17 thousand tanks, 615 aircraft.

Thanks to the Soviet troops, the enemy offensives still stopped. By that time, strategic reserves were already concentrated behind the front line, they also included Siberian and Far Eastern divisions. At the same time, the enemy still managed to receive reports about preparations for a counteroffensive, but the German side did not want to believe that it would really take place.

On December 4, the commander of Army Group Center, Field Marshal Fedor von Bock, after one of such reports, stated: “The enemy’s combat capabilities are not so great that he could launch a large counteroffensive with these forces at the present time.”

The beginning of the counteroffensive and the first successes

On December 5, 1941, the counteroffensive of the Soviet troops near Moscow began. The headquarters determined his further goal: to defeat the entire Army Group Center. The Kalinin Front under the command of Colonel General Ivan Konev went on the counteroffensive. On December 6, the Western Front (commanded by General of the Army Georgy Zhukov) and the right wing of the Southwestern Front, commanded by Marshal of the Soviet Union, also went on the counteroffensive. The newly created Bryansk Front also participated in the operation. On December 8, Hitler signed a directive on the transition to defense on the entire Soviet-German front.

Already on December 9, Rogachevo and Yelets were liberated, later Solnechnogorsk. By the end of December - Kozelsk, Kaluga, at the beginning of January - Maloyaroslavets.

The counteroffensive of the Soviet troops continued successfully, despite the lack of superiority in forces and severe frosts, and by January 7, the Soviet army defeated the formations of Army Group Center. The enemy's flank strike groups were thrown back from Moscow by 100-250 km, 38 divisions were defeated, and more than 11 thousand settlements were liberated. According to some sources, the losses of the enemy from December 5, 1941 to January 7, 1942 amounted to 103.6 thousand people.

As a result, the Soviet troops managed to get far into the German defenses and disrupt the operational interaction of the North and Center Army Groups. It was not possible to completely destroy the main forces of the "Center" due to a lack of forces and means of the Soviet army.

As a result of the counteroffensive, the Moscow and Tula regions, many districts of the Tver and Smolensk regions were liberated.

Thus, during the course of the war, the enemy suffered his first major defeat. “Only those “conquerors” who were led through its streets under escort as prisoners could see Moscow,” Nikolai Kuznetsov noted.

Recently, previously unpublished German documents relating to the counter-offensive of Soviet troops near Moscow were made public. Project for the study, digitization and publication of documents captured by the Red Army during the Second World War, together with Russian partners, is conducted by the German Historical Institute in Moscow. "Gazeta.Ru" offers to get acquainted with their most interesting fragments.

Directive of the High Command of the Wehrmacht Ground Forces dated 02/18/1942 with an assessment of the results of the winter campaign:

“On December 5, 1941, the Russian winter came with an unexpected cooling down to minus 30 degrees. This dealt a heavy blow to the battle-weary troops, who, lacking winter uniforms and the necessary equipment, without weapons and equipment prepared for the winter, were located in open areas far from supply bases and were forced to immediately go on the defensive instead of a decisive offensive.

Apparently, the Russians were waiting for this moment, realizing what the Russian winter is capable of.

On November 7, the enemy began a winter campaign, which was primarily aimed at destroying material and technical means and thereby decisively weakening the German troops. The ground forces fought for their lives for several weeks."

Report on the state of military equipment, primarily vehicles, and other movable equipment:

“The technical condition of the army, especially motorized equipment, requires decisive organizational action. All other fast formations, infantry divisions and units of the eastern army, by and large, can only be replenished by themselves. We have to put up with the lack of material supply ... The serious material losses of recent days, on the one hand, and the Russian forces, on the other, demand in every possible way to limit the consumption and loss of weapons and ammunition.

Telegram from the High Command of the Wehrmacht Ground Forces to Army Group Center with an excerpt from the minutes of the meeting dated 12/20/1941, at which Hitler justified his order prohibiting retreat:

“The fanatical desire to defend all the space occupied by the troops must be instilled in all personnel, including by the most severe methods. If each unit is inspired by this desire, then in any sector, every attack and, accordingly, the breakthrough of the enemy's line of defense will be doomed to failure.

Otherwise, the Russians will immediately begin to pursue the retreating troops, will not give them rest, will attack again and again, not giving them the opportunity to gain a foothold on any line, since the troops do not have prepared rear positions. And there is a danger that the words about the Napoleonic retreat will become a reality.

Von Hoepner Telegram with a reaction to an order from the center:

“Following the order of the Fuhrer, I am forced to again point out the deplorable state of my troops ... The combat readiness has decreased so much that the division can only be considered as a reinforced battalion. In such circumstances, holding an unprepared defensive line in the open is impossible. An order requiring this will be of no help here if replenishment and supplies are not provided. The gravity of the situation must be recognized. The required fanatical resistance will lead to the total loss of an incapacitated army.

Major von Gersdorff's report about a trip to the front from December 5 to December 8, 1941:

“Insufficient or non-existent supply of clothing or lighting - namely, these are the most important needs at the moment - has caused or will cause a crisis of confidence in the leadership. The troops formed the opinion that the campaign in Russia was launched without proper advance preparation for the Russian winter. The mood in the troops as a whole can be described as good, despite the fact that the withdrawal from the line of the Nara River had a depressing effect on the mood.

“The available clothing, including winter uniforms according to the charter, does not fully comply with the conditions of the Russian winter and leads to frostbite of personnel during frosty days.

In general, a particularly severe frost leads to daily losses of four to five people for each company.

If the frosts continue, then with a known number of personnel, it can be calculated when not a single combat-ready serviceman will remain in the unit. Judging by the captured and killed Russians, it can be concluded that the enemy is much better and more practically prepared for winter conditions. In this regard, it is especially important to: a) supply suitable footwear, especially for motorized riflemen, whose footwear is not suitable for winter land battles; b) additional supplies of socks, the wear of which is especially great; c) supply of warm linen; d) supply of high-quality gloves and headgear.”

Item III. "Moral and educational activities."

“The staff lacks books and games. A prerequisite is the solution of the lighting issue. I got the impression that the executions of Jews, prisoners of war, and also commissars met with almost complete rejection in the officer corps.

map with the range of German radio intelligence

Sergei Varshavchik, RIA Novosti columnist.

In December 1941, the Red Army, during a strategic counter-offensive near Moscow, saved the capital of the USSR and stopped the German blitzkrieg. World War II entered a phase of protracted confrontation, in which Nazi Germany had no chance of winning. At the same time, the geography of the war expanded dramatically: Japan attacked the United States and Great Britain.

An unpleasant surprise for the German command

Near Leningrad in the first half of December, fierce battles continued for Tikhvin, which was equally important for both sides. The Germans defending the city understood that with the capture of Tikhvin they had cut off the railway connecting Leningrad with the rest of the country, and thereby violated the supply of food to the besieged city. The German command planned to move north, to connect with the Finnish troops, in order to tighten the "loop" around Leningrad more tightly. The Soviet troops, in turn, sought to surround and destroy the enemy's Tikhvin grouping in order to frustrate the enemy's plans.

The German 1st Army Corps fought off the fierce attacks of the troops of the Leningrad Front for several days, but on December 9 was forced to leave the city. In general, the entire 18th German Army was pushed to the east and retreated to the city of Volkhov. The distance between the Leningrad and Volkhov fronts was sharply narrowed. But, despite the fact that the Red Army liberated a significant territory, it was not possible to surround and defeat the Germans. As it was not possible to achieve a breakthrough of the blockade.

Meanwhile, frost hit Leningrad, power plants stopped working, and. The first cases of cannibalism were recorded. According to the UNKVD for the Leningrad region, 43 people were arrested for eating human meat in December 1941. They were immediately shot, and their property was confiscated.

End of Operation Typhoon

The local victory in the northern sector of the Soviet-German front was reinforced by a strategic counter-offensive near Moscow, where by December 1941 the capital of the USSR was engulfed from the south and north by "pincers" of three German tank groups. Having exhausted the Germans on the near approaches to the capital (where in some areas they were 25 kilometers from the Kremlin) and repelled all their attacks, on December 5-6, the troops of the Kalinin, Western and right wing of the Southwestern Fronts delivered a series of powerful blows to enemy positions and broke through them in almost every direction.

During the Kalinin, Klin-Solnechnogorsk, Narofominsk-Borovsk, Yelets, Tula, Kaluga, Belevsko-Kozelsk offensive operations, the Red Army pushed back the Wehrmacht 100-250 kilometers from Moscow, thereby eliminating the direct threat to the capital of the USSR by the end of December 1941.

For the German command to capture Moscow, it was an extremely unpleasant surprise. On December 7, the Chief of Staff of the German Land Forces, General Halder, wrote in his diary: "The most terrible thing is that the OKW [Wehrmacht Supreme Command] does not understand the state of our troops and is busy patching holes instead of making principled strategic decisions."

However, the Germans were not going to give up. On December 8, Hitler issued Directive No. 39, nicknamed the "stop order" by the troops. In it, the Fuhrer, fearing a repetition of the sad fate of the Napoleonic army, which, retreating from Moscow in the fall of 1812, almost all died, categorically forbade his soldiers to leave their positions. Among other tasks, the troops were given the following: "To provide suitable conditions for the resumption of large-scale offensive operations in 1942."

In addition, Hitler made a number of resignations among the generals. On December 12, he removed Field Marshal von Bock from the post of commander of Army Group Center. On December 19, the commander-in-chief of the German ground forces, Field Marshal von Brauchitsch, was dismissed. Hitler, no longer trusting his generals, held this position himself until the end of the war. On December 26, the "father" of the tank forces of the Third Reich, General Guderian, was transferred to the reserve, who, without an order, withdrew his troops from their positions.

The tanks were powerless

The commander of the Western Front, General Zhukov, already after the war, analyzing the reasons for the December failure of the capture of Moscow by the Germans, came to the conclusion that their reliance on tanks as the main tool of blitzkrieg did not justify itself.

In his opinion, the enemy flank groupings, which were supposed to close their "pincers" north and south of the capital of the USSR, did not have enough infantry to secure the achieved lines. As a result, the Panzerwaffe suffered heavy losses and eventually lost their penetrating power.

Another miscalculation of the Germans, according to Zhukov, was their inability to deliver a timely blow to the center of the Western Front. Which, in turn, gave the Soviet command the opportunity to freely transfer reserves from passive defense sectors to more active ones, directing them against Wehrmacht strike groups.

An important factor in the victory was the fact that German communications were stretched for thousands of kilometers and were attacked by partisans and aircraft. At the same time, the Soviet command, taking advantage of the proximity of Moscow as the largest transport hub, was able to quickly and secretly for the enemy to transfer large reserves from the depths of the country in advance.

Muscovites have not forgotten the feat of the defenders of the city. On the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the beginning of the counteroffensive, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin personally invited the participants in the defense of the capital (some of whom live today in other countries) to take part in the celebrations on the occasion of the glorious date.

Stalin's victory euphoria

The victory on the fields of the Moscow region dispelled the myth of the invincibility of the German army. In addition, Tikhvin was taken near Leningrad, in the south of the country the Germans retreated from Rostov-on-Don, in the Crimea Manstein was never able to take Sevastopol ... It is not surprising that Stalin regarded all this as clear evidence that the Red Army wrested from the enemy strategic initiative. Now, they say, it only remains to go on a general offensive in order, as in 1812, to expel the invaders from the country as soon as possible.

For this delusion of the Supreme Commander, tens of thousands of Red Army soldiers soon had to pay with their lives - the enemy was still very strong, and the German troops carried out Hitler's "stop order" with all their usual discipline.

The writer Konstantin Simonov wrote in The Living and the Dead: "no matter how much they [Soviet soldiers fighting in the Moscow region] had behind them, there was still a whole war ahead."

One of the manifestations of the victorious euphoria was the order to conduct the Kerch landing operation, which the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command gave to the Transcaucasian Front on December 7, 1941. The purpose of the bold plan was to land in the Crimea and encircle the enemy's Kerch grouping.

After two weeks allotted for preparation, on December 26, the operation began and was generally quite successful. The 46th German infantry division and the regiment of Romanian mountain riflemen, who defended the Kerch Peninsula, could not resist the powerful Soviet landing force (total number of 82 thousand people) for a long time and, after heavy fighting, were forced to retreat.

This angered Hitler, who ordered the trial of the commander of the 42nd Corps, General Count von Sponeck, who ordered the retreat. The count was sentenced to death, which was carried out in 1944.

But the battles for Crimea were just beginning. And the main ones took place already in the new year, 1942, when the Soviet armies on the Kerch Peninsula were destroyed, and Sevastopol fell.

Japanese blitzkrieg

In December 1941, two new and very serious players entered the World War - Japan and the USA. On the morning of December 7, aircraft from Japanese aircraft carriers launched a massive attack on the main base of the Pacific Fleet of the US Navy, Pearl Harbor. As a result of the attack, the Americans lost 4 battleships, 2 destroyers, 1 mine layer, and several more ships were seriously damaged. American aviation also suffered serious losses. The attack killed 2,403 people.

Why did Imperial Japan attack the United States, and not the USSR, with which it had previously had a number of serious clashes (on Lake Khasan in 1938 and on Khalkhin Gol in 1939)? As military historian, professor of the Russian State Humanitarian University Alexei Kilichenkov said in an interview with RIA Novosti, there were several reasons for this.

“They forget that by December 1941, Japan was waging an active war in China and was forced to keep up to a million of its soldiers there,” Kilichenkov noted. He stressed that in the event of an attack on the USSR, the Japanese would have to fight in China on two fronts: in the north with units of the Red Army, and in the south of the country with the army of Chinese Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek.

At the same time, according to the historian, in order to continue the war, the Japanese needed raw materials - oil, iron ore, bauxite, coking coal, nickel, manganese, aluminum and much more. In addition, Japan, in order to feed its population, had to import a significant part of the food by sea.

All this was in that part of East and Southeast Asia that was controlled by the US and Britain, while limiting access to treasured resources for Japan. The forceful elimination of competitors allowed the country of the rising sun to become the undivided mistress of East and Southeast Asia.

The effect of the attack on Pearl Harbor exceeded all expectations of the attackers. Japan neutralized the US Pacific Fleet for at least half a year, thereby freeing its hands in the Pacific theater of operations, where, after the strike on the US, it was Britain's turn.

Japanese soldiers landed in December 1941 in British Malaya, in the Philippines, in Borneo. Hong Kong fell on 25 December. At the same time, the British suffered a very serious blow at sea. On December 10, 1941, Japanese aircraft sank the British battleship Prince of Wales and the battlecruiser Repulse.

In general, in a short time, with minimal losses, the Japanese were able to achieve great victories by inflicting powerful blows on their enemies. As a result, the British Empire lost part of its eastern colonies, and the United States of America received a serious reason to enter the Second World War.

ON DECEMBER 5, 1941, THE COUNTEROFFENSIVE OF THE SOVIET ARMY NEAR MOSCOW began, the myth of the invincibility of the Nazi army was dispelled, the enemy was driven back with heavy losses from the capital of our Motherland, the city of Moscow

After the last attempts of the German army to break through to Moscow were thwarted by stubborn defense and counterattacks in late November - early December, the initiative began to pass to the Soviet troops. German troops suffered heavy losses in manpower and equipment, their morale was broken. Conditions were created for the Red Army to launch a counteroffensive.

The idea of ​​the Soviet command was to defeat and push the enemy strike groups further from the capital. The main task in the counteroffensive was assigned to the Western Front (commander - General of the Army G.K. Zhukov). To the north and south, the troops of Kalininsky (commander - Colonel General I.S. Konev) and Southwestern (commander - Marshal of the Soviet Union S.K. Timoshenko, from December 18, 1941 - Lieutenant General F.Ya. Kostenko) struck fronts.

A significant role in the counteroffensive was played by the aviation of the Reserve of the Supreme High Command and the partisans operating in the territory occupied by the enemy.

The Red Army had to launch a counteroffensive under difficult conditions, when the numerical superiority in manpower, artillery and tanks was still on the side of the enemy.

By the beginning of December, the Soviet troops near Moscow had about 720 thousand people, 5900 guns and mortars, 415 rocket artillery installations, 670 tanks (including 205 heavy and medium ones) and 760 aircraft (of which 590 were new designs). German troops at that time had 800 thousand people, about 10,400 guns and mortars, 1,000 tanks and over 600 aircraft.

The Headquarters of the Supreme High Command in its plans counted on the exhaustion of the enemy troops, their lack of prepared defense and operational reserves, their sprawl on a 1000-km front, unpreparedness for combat operations in winter conditions, the high morale of the Soviet troops and their advantageous operational position on towards the wings of the German group. The covert concentration of strategic reserves in 1941 in the directions of the main attacks and the correct timing of their delivery were to ensure the surprise of the counteroffensive and, to a certain extent, compensate for the lack of forces and means.

The counteroffensive began without an operational pause on December 5-6, 1941 on the front from Kalinin to Yelets. The fighting immediately took on a fierce character. Despite the lack of superiority in forces and means, in severe frosts, deep snow cover, the troops of the left wing of the Kalinin and the right wing of the Western Fronts already in the first days of the counteroffensive broke through the enemy defenses south of Kalinin and north-west of Moscow, cut the railway and the Kalinin-Moscow highway and liberated a number of settlements. Simultaneously with the troops advancing northwest of Moscow, the troops of the left wing of the Western and right wing of the Southwestern fronts launched a counteroffensive.

Strong attacks by the Red Army troops on the flank groupings of Army Group Center, intended to encircle Moscow, forced the German command to take measures to save their troops from defeat. On December 8, Hitler signed a directive on the transition to defense on the entire Soviet-German front. Army Group Center received the task of holding strategically important areas at any cost.

On December 9, Soviet troops liberated Rogachevo, Venev, Yelets, December 11 - Istra, December 12 - Solnechnogorsk, December 13 - Efremov, December 15 - Klin, December 16 - Kalinin, December 20 - Volokolamsk. By the beginning of January 1942, the troops of the right wing of the Western Front reached the line of the Lama and Ruza rivers. By the same time, the troops of the Kalinin Front reached the Pavlikovo-Staritsa line. The troops of the center of the Western Front liberated Naro-Fominsk on December 26, Maloyaroslavets on January 2, and Borovsk on January 4. The counteroffensive was successfully developed on the left wing of the Western Front and in the Bryansk Front (recreated on December 18, 1941, commander - General Ya. T. Cherevichenko).

On December 25, Soviet troops reached the Oka on a broad front. On December 28, Kozelsk was liberated, on December 30 - Kaluga, in early January 1942 - Meshchovsk and Mosalsk. Troops of the Bryansk Front in cooperation with the troops of the left wing

Western Front by the beginning of January 1942 reached the line Belev - Mtsensk - Verkhovye. This created favorable conditions for the encirclement of Army Group Center, but the advancing Soviet troops did not have sufficient forces for this. The pace of the offensive slowed down.

In early January 1942, the counteroffensive in the western strategic direction was completed. During the fighting, the main forces of the German 2nd, 3rd and 4th tank armies and formations of the 9th army were defeated. 38 enemy divisions (including 11 armored and 4 motorized) suffered a heavy defeat. The enemy was thrown back 100-250 km from Moscow.

The defeat of the shock groups advancing on Moscow caused confusion among the German command. The commander-in-chief of the ground forces, Field Marshal W. von Brauchitsch, the commander of the Army Group Center F. Bock, the commanders of the 2nd and 4th tank and 9th armies, X. Guderian, E. Gepner, A. Strauss and others - a total of 35 generals.

In the course of the counter-offensive near Moscow, the Soviet troops thwarted the adventurous plan of a "blitzkrieg", dispelled the myth of the "invincibility" of the German army, and wrested the strategic initiative from the hands of the German command.

On December 5-6, 1941, the counteroffensive of the Red Army near Moscow began.

In the first days of the offensive, along the entire length of the front from Kalinin to Yelets, our troops advanced 35-55 km. By the end of the operation, the enemy was thrown back 100-250 km from Moscow. About 40 German divisions were defeated, including 11 armored and 4 motorized. According to German data, the losses of Army Group Center amounted to 772 thousand people. Propagandists, whatever they are called, have not tired of talking about this for the last 70 years. Only recently have there been honest attempts to figure out how the Red Army allowed the enemy into the very heart of Russia.

Surprise for Stalin

Hitler issued a directive on the attack on Moscow on September 6, 1941. This operation was named "Typhoon". On December 5, 1941, an event took place in the most important western sector of the Soviet-German front, which brought the high command of the Red Army into a stupor. In the morning, Soviet pilots accidentally discovered huge columns of German tanks and motorized infantry, which were heading towards Moscow at full speed. After some time, the scale of the catastrophe became clear: our Western Front was broken through, and the troops covering the distant approaches to the capital were bypassed and partially fought in the encirclement.

While the reports of the Soviet Information Bureau, according to which our losses were, as a rule, less than German, spoke of defensive battles on the distant approaches to Moscow, the enemy was actually located several tens of kilometers from the city. The Moscow divisions of the people's militia had a difficult fate. In September 1941, they were included in the combat strength of the army. In early October, 5 out of 12 former militia divisions were surrounded near Vyazma. Some of these divisions lost up to 95% of their personnel, that is, they ceased to exist as combat units and were excluded from the ranks of the Red Army as those who died at the front.

However, the personnel divisions fought a little better. On November 15, in the Serpukhov area, the 17th and 44th cavalry divisions transferred from Central Asia tried to attack the German infantry from the 4th tank group, which had dug into the ground. In the combat log of this unit, it was written: “Riders with shining blades rushed to the attack across the space illuminated by the winter sun, bending down to the necks of the horses ... The first shells exploded in the midst of the attackers ... Soon a terrible black cloud hung over them. People and horses torn to pieces take off into the air... It is difficult to make out where the riders are, where the horses are... Crazy horses rushed about in this hell. The few surviving riders were finished off by artillery and machine gun fire.

Oddly enough, soon the red horsemen repeated the suicidal attack. As a result, the 44th division was killed almost completely, and the 17th lost three-quarters of its personnel.

Save who can

The fact that Moscow would have to surrender, Stalin and his entourage allowed. We started preparing for this in the summer. Warehouses with explosives were waiting in the wings. Many important administrative, economic and cultural buildings were mined in advance. Among them are the Government House, St. Basil's Cathedral, the Metropol and National hotels and others. Moreover, some buildings were not completely mined, but “in accordance with expediency”: they planned to destroy the restaurant hall in hotels, and the stage in theaters. Explosives in the Bolshoi Theater were placed under the orchestra pit, but so much tol was laid in the pit that in the event of an explosion, only a deep funnel would remain from the entire Bolshoi. Recently, during the reconstruction of the Bolshoi, a part of this sinister arsenal was discovered, which was forgotten in the 41st.

Dozens of radio operators were legalized in advance as employees of household appliance repair shops. The underground, organized by the NKVD, consisted of independent groups with a "special assignment" and illegal singles. Among them were people prepared for special actions in the event that Adolf Hitler appeared in Moscow.

As you know, these preparations were useless. The enemy managed to drive away from Moscow. On December 13, the Soviet Information Bureau published a message stating the failure of the German attempts to encircle the capital and the first results of the counteroffensive. Central newspapers printed photographs of prominent Soviet generals who won the battle for Moscow: Zhukov, Rokossovsky, Govorov and others. Among the portraits of the heroes was a photograph of General Vlasov, who, in just a few months, would agree to go to the service of Hitler.