Why do we need this Hartmann or the Rules of the war against the dead fascists
In recent years, as I have already noted in various publications before, the level of work of the Russian media has increased markedly. As, quite deservedly, confidence in them from the inside and outside of the country has also increased. This is a merit of both highly professional personnel, who are able to select high-quality material and evidence base, and the admission of some pluralism of opinions, which gives the public, so to speak, the effect of “a view from different angles”. Nevertheless, to my great regret, from time to time, the Russian media of the highest level and their most professional representatives on some topics simply begin to "slide" to the level of primitive and unproven "black and white" propaganda.
It is clear that there is a certain accepted line, which, for certain issues, must be strictly adhered to. But, as the old saying goes, "make a fool pray to God, he will break his forehead." Sometimes too zealous and not quite adequate upholding of a certain point of view turns out to be more likely the opposite effect, both in terms of the impact on the audience or listeners, and for the image of the media itself doing it. But the reputation is such that it takes a very long time to build and deserve it, but you can literally break it or lose it at the moment. One big stupid thing or a lie and that’s all, trust is lost. In precisely this way, once considered the standards of journalism for decades, many leading Western publications and television channels are rapidly losing their popularity and trust of the general public, day after day replicating for the sake of someone absolutely illogical or even false, but as if politically correct for a given period of time information, in fact, becoming only a primitive tool of primitive propaganda.
On Sunday, October XNUMXth, in one of my favorite TV shows, Vesti Nedeli, with the host Dmitry Kiselyov and from his own lips, there was a harsh condemnation of the publication of a certain Diletant magazine, in which he talked about the German WWII pilot Erich Hartmann. This topic in the News of the Week, which was extremely unexpected for me, was devoted to a whole plot and a fairly large amount of airtime. Even more surprised by the tone and content of the report. The Dilettant magazine for this publication was accused of practically chanting fascist heroes, blackening the memory of the victims of the Great Patriotic War, and propaganda of Nazism.
In principle, I can guess what initial goal Dmitry Kiselyov set for this report, but he also definitely achieved another one - I think that a huge number of people who had never before been particularly interested in German aviation of World War II and had never heard anything about after the publication of the “News of the Week” show, did they find this magazine exactly? and they read this article in it, not excluding me. I wonder why all of a sudden such a commotion on the main federal channel and in the main issue News during the week! But after reading this material, I did not find anything criminal or truly glorifying fascism or trampling the results of the Great Patriotic War in this article. An ordinary historical publication on a specific historical topic, and rather short and incomplete - in any decent encyclopedia much more and more is written about this famous German pilot, apparently the person was really outstanding and deserved it. But someone just really wanted to find fault, or they set such a task. Well, apparently, they tried on Russian central television as they could.
This publication, which attracted the attention of the famous TV presenter RTR, on October 2, 2018, is called “Erich Hartmann - Luftwaffe Legend”. Hartmann is still the official world record holder in the number of enemy aircraft shot down in battle. According to German data, there are as many as 352 of them in his account. Of these, 348 are Soviet and 4 are American (this is according to the "Dilettante", according to some other American data, there are seven or eight of them), which is not surprising - Hartmann fought on the Eastern Front , and so met with the Americans in the air extremely rarely, that is, they were lucky in this sense, we can say. In general, the material of the historical journal Dilettant briefly describes the life and military career of a pilot, who is without a doubt one of the most outstanding combat pilots both in World War II and of all times in general. And not only the author of the article in The Dilettant thinks so, but most military historians, Soviet ones do not exclude this. But the director general of the All-Russian State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company, in this publication, judging by his violent reaction, was outraged by almost everything, but the main thing is that the hero of the article was German and served during the World War II precisely in the Hitler army. As Dmitry Kiselev calculated, more than three hundred shot down Soviet planes are at least two hundred dead Soviet pilots. Well, in general, it’s hard to disagree with the quantity and the fact itself - front, war, death, and so on ...
All this was a huge tragedy for entire nations. But, for example, it doesn’t occur to anyone (I hope) to condemn the Hero of the Soviet Union, the submariner A.I. Marinesco for the sinking of the German transport Wilhelm Gustloff? And on board this ship there were only about 1500 German military personnel, most of whom were evacuated patients and wounded, and all other passengers, according to various sources, from seven to ten thousand people, were civilian refugees, the ship was heavily overloaded. After the disaster, no more than one fifth of all the people on deck survived. But Marinesco attacked an enemy ship leaving the enemy port in a group with enemy warships, and everything that happened after that is a war that does not happen without victims, including innocents. And these Soviet pilots, with whom the German Hartmann fought in the air, were also unlikely to carry civilian passengers or perishable fruits on their planes, and if this German ace himself had hit them in the sight, he would have no doubt as well would have sent him to that light and with his Messerschmitt ... And, fortunately, they also managed to do this often and repeatedly - in the end, the ending of this war is known to everyone.
Also, by the way, Mr. Kiselyov didn’t like the phrase “... German planes, on average, were faster and rose to a higher height than Soviet ones ...” Tables with comparatives were immediately displayed on the TV screen as a refutation technical data of the Messerschmitt BF-109 modification “G”, on which the aforementioned Erich Hartmann was flying, and the Soviet fighter Yak-3 and La-7, which the Germans were clearly superior in many technical data. And it is true. But firstly, here Kiselev somehow missed in the context an important detail in this particular proposal, namely, that German planes were “average” better in technical capabilities, and this “average” comes from the fact that, to Unfortunately, by no means all the Soviet Air Force in the period described above were exclusively represented by the Yak-3, and even more so the La-7, in truth, there were not so many of them in the troops, while the Messerschmitt - 109 ”in various modifications was from the very beginning of hostilities the most massive fighter of the Hitlerite Luftwaffe, it was also widely exported and in the number of produced nearly 35 pieces was the most massive fighter in the world in general. Moreover, the production of this machine itself began back in 000, and he officially went to serve in the Reich Air Force from 1935, while both Soviet fighters described by Kiselyov began to be produced only in the spring of 1937. And secondly, the performance of the German pilot is confirmed once again by these performance characteristics, if, according to Kiselyov, he was fighting with newer and technically better machines than his own, already somewhat outdated Messer. The host of Vesti Nedeki does not credit the very number of aircraft shot down by Hartmann himself, but exclusively Goebbels propaganda, which simply “needed such blond blue-eyed heroes,” and they attributed, they say, hundreds of shot down enemies for the sake of a red word and maintaining the declining morale of the Nazis in the trenches ...
Only somehow Dmitry Kiselyov apparently doesn’t know that in Soviet (and not only) flight schools and the Air Force Academy for some reason the experience and actions of all these “blue-eyed heroes invented by Goebbels propaganda” during the war, and after its end, then for decades carefully disassembled and studied. Apparently, too, they were so seduced by fascist propaganda ... As a matter of fact, the military experience of the German generals Guderian, Manstein, von Bock, Rommel, and many many others was disassembled and adopted, because then the Red Army had an experienced, strong, intelligent opponent there is still something to learn, and even to this day, and not only in the military sphere ...
This was the opinion of outstanding Soviet and Russian scientists and military leaders, but the journalist Dmitry Kiselev does not think so, and not for scientific and practical, but apparently purely for ideological reasons. Although the correctness of these ideas, or rather their interpretation and application, can also be doubted ... By the way, when working on books on the theme of World War II, I had to deal with German archival materials more than once. I don’t presume to say how many planes exactly Erich Hartmann shot down, that’s what I’ve never specifically been interested in, but I know from personal experience that such information in the German armed forces was checked through several channels, if possible. For his merits, this pilot was awarded, among other things, one of the highest possible awards of the Third Reich - the Knight's Cross with oak leaves, swords and diamonds, which in fact are four degrees of this Knight's Cross, and they were assigned separately from each other, each for certain merits, and it was almost impossible to organize without confirmation of the actions then accessible by means of objective control and witnesses, simply on the basis of some propaganda videos or newspaper articles (unlike the USSR, by the way, where similar cases are known and even became the subject of legal proceedings). But even if you imagine the almost impossible that he shot down not three and a half hundreds, but, say, even two hundred aircraft, this figure is still huge!
Both of my grandfathers fought. One, by mum, was a tanker, the other, by dad, pilot, both before and after the war, cadre officers, both served as colonels, both after the war they studied at the academy of armored forces and the Air Force, respectively, and that’s why I know what was studied there first hand. I was interested in the Army and all this concerning from childhood, and accordingly I asked grandfathers about everything as I could. So I’ll continue with the information I received from my grandfathers: the first one, a tanker, started the battle path from the Finnish campaign, it so happened that he then fought a lot on Lend-Lease equipment, ended the war in the Czechoslovak city of Brno with the regiment commander as part of the Second Ukrainian Front, and this regiment was entirely on American Sherman tanks. In the words of his grandfather himself, “these tanks were crappy, both in comparison with ours, and with German ones”, rubber caterpillars often broke, motors burned, etc., but these, they say, were not the worst ones what did we get from the allies. At the beginning of the war, General Lee or the English Matilda came from the United States to the Red Army, and this, grandfather, was “even worse than shit”, but they had to fight on that, their tanks were sorely lacking. To support the infantry in the field, these machines were still somehow suitable, but if necessary, engage in a direct clash even with far from the best and not the newest German tanks or self-propelled guns, these were ready-made iron coffins for the crews.
The second grandfather, who was a pilot, was at the front as a pilot of the notorious Il-2 attack aircraft, but also flew on the Lendlizovskie R-39 Aerial Cobra, though not in battle, but only during the transfer of this equipment from Iran to the USSR. In the Soviet Air Force these fighters were delivered in fairly large quantities. The grandfather-pilot spoke about them about the same as the grandfather-tanker about American tanks. He said that in the US Army they mainly flew blacks (for adherents of tolerance, the specification is African-Americans), the plane was dangerous, it often crashed, while the engine was sort of behind the cockpit, so if it wasn’t very successful landing because of damage, the need “on the belly” or simply with a broken landing gear, which was not uncommon at front-line airfields and in battle, the motor broke off the mounts and, moving forward, literally killed the pilot on the ground, which simply could not happen in other models. This is so, for the information to Mr. Kiselyov and similar specialists that not all of us fought on the excellent T-34/85, IS, or the then latest Yaks and Lavochkins, perhaps partly also from here a huge the number of victories of German tank crews and pilots ... By the way, it was on the Aero Cobra, that is, on the far from the most successful American fighter of that time, in 1943-1944 the Soviet ace pilot, three times the hero of the Soviet Union Alexander Ivanovich Pokryshkin, also counted which 59 personally shot down enemy aircraft plus has confirmed in group battles. Honor and praise be to him. It is interesting, by the way, that after the collapse of the USSR, the number of Pokryshkin’s victories was also called into question by some “historians”, and it was attributed to propaganda, this time Stalin’s, but this, it seems, has such a fate for air aces ...
But we go further - the director general of VGTRK, among other things, didn’t really like the article he saw that Hartmann is depicted in the photo against the background of an airplane with a swastika on its tail and even with a smile. And this photograph, according to Kiselyov, personifies as much as "... contempt for the cultural code of the Russian people, where the memory of the victims of the Great Patriotic War is sacred ..." (quote). I fully and completely support the idea of the sacredness for our people of the memory of the victims of the Great Patriotic War, but the use of precisely these words here and in this context is a clear excess, to say the least ... A certain person had the happiness or misfortune to be born in the German town of Vaysakh, land Wurttemberg, and of military age to reach just in time for the Second World War. Therefore, it is natural that he got into the German army, which then was the same as it was and was doing what it was doing. If he had been born, say, in Lipetsk or Krasnodar, then he would have posed with a smile, most likely not from Messerschmitt with a swastika, but from the same Yak or Aero Cobra with a red star, like Pokryshkin. But everything happened as it happened, and the one who was destined to become the world's best fighter pilot was born German in Germany. Moreover, in my opinion, the fact itself on which side he found himself in that war, however, does not detract from his skill and real achievements. And that same photograph is a historical document - on which he flew, with which he was photographed. He served his country as best he could and the one that was then. And there were millions of such people and, by the way, on both sides. I personally spoke with Soviet and several German veterans, as well as with Americans and Czechs who served in the British Air Force during World War II. I even attended meetings of these people who once stood against each other on opposite sides of the front line. Once it was even a triple meeting of pilots - German, Russian and two Americans. A very interesting impression, but the main thing that I saw, or rather I never saw at all and never at these meetings, is hatred or some kind of anger. Nothing of the kind, but a huge and genuine mutual interest. Many years later, it was interesting for these people to find out how their opponents saw it, and they were sincerely glad to talk and apparently just look at each other no longer through sight ... In the German armed forces during World War II, the total number of convinced Nazis approximately the percentage of the number of convinced communists in the Red Army. And that is a fact. It is simply stupid and dishonest to hang on all these people the label “fascists”.
Now in the so-called anti-terrorist operation zone in eastern Ukraine there are Ukrainian armed forces as “ideological” sharply nationalist (or even Nazi) “volunteer battalions”, which, fortunately for all, are a minority, and the regular army are conscripts there and there is the bulk, and the overwhelming majority of these people fell and further on the basis of rotation they fall into the combat zone directly against their own will. But they are citizens of Ukraine, the one that is now, and this is not their fault. They took the oath and were called up to the regular army of their country. And this same army, under the authority of its government, the one it currently has, is doing what it is doing there .... And their flag is not red, and there are crosses on the tanks ... So now what, we must call them all without exception fascists and Bandera, it is necessary to hate all these people fiercely? ... According to the logic of Mr. Kiselyov, apparently yes. But this is, after all, the same thing that the crazy Kiev authorities are doing today, calling all the inhabitants of Donbass “separatists and terrorists”, urging them to be destroyed and not considered for people. Where is the difference? What good will all these labels lead to entire nations? People are different, times are different, but the system is the same - stupid "black and white" propaganda: it’s us who are right, good, white and fluffy, and there they are “fascists”, “communists”, “untermans”, “ quilted jackets "," Colorado "and so on and so forth ... The principle is still the same, and where it leads is known, so why repeat all this again?
“Why do we need Hartmann?” - raising his hands in his "corporate" gesture, Dmitry Kiselyov asks from the television screen of the Russian state channel, he is supposedly a German, a Galilee fascist, he has a swastika on the plane there and therefore he deserves only hatred and contempt, and we have our heroes . Like this. The logic here is apparently the same as that of Ukrainian nationalists, who burn books, simply because they are in Russian, the content does not interest them. Or, for the same reason, the monuments are demolished - they are Soviet, and everything Soviet is bad by definition, the setting is now this, and God forbid there is still somewhere a star and a sickle with a hammer, this is generally horror-horror, symbols of occupation, an insult to memory of the Ukrainian people and their struggle for freedom ... Or somewhere in the Baltic states - why, they say there from TV screens, to read us some Russian heroes or learn something from them, they are communist occupiers, and we have our own heroes there is. There are, how not to be, and torchlight processions of Waffen-SS veterans begin ...
Here someone may object, they were the invaders, and we are the liberators, it was they who invaded us, and we defended our land. That’s yes, but just don’t forget that the exact same “black and white” propaganda was before, and the soldiers were told that they were fighting for a holy cause, fighting the inhuman tyranny that was about to overwhelm the whole world - and it was in these concepts and these same words, the high command turned to the Germans, and to our Red Army soldiers, and to the troops of the Anglo-American allies. And it was with such thoughts that both went into battle, got into their tanks or planes, with stars or crosses ... Don’t you believe it? Read the newspapers of the time, they are usually in the libraries in the public domain, or the memoirs of the veterans themselves from different angles. And our soldiers were told the same thing in 1956 in Hungary (by the way, my grandfather was also a tanker there), and in 1968 in Czechoslovakia, then in Afghanistan and in other places where the Soviet army didn’t defend its own land, but its military personnel there were simply fulfilling their duty to the motherland, orders of the command and were faithful to the oath. Are these people to blame for something? Pilots, tank crews, paratroopers or motorized rifles? In my opinion, no. Perhaps the leadership of the country and the command are to blame somewhere and for some reason, but ordinary soldiers and officers shed their blood far from home, and today their graves are hit by vandals, simply because there are monuments with a red star above them, from which With the help of exactly the same “black and white” propaganda, in some places they have now made a simply hated symbol of the invaders, nothing more. And to uneducated drunken youths somewhere in Eastern Europe, it doesn’t even matter when and under what circumstances the Soviet soldiers whose graves they smashed were killed, it’s enough that they just have a red star above them, as they were also told on TV, a symbol of hated communism and occupation, although they really know absolutely nothing about either.
What, somehow, is this already far from the original topic, from the article about the Hartmann pilot? No, it's all there. I’m just trying to show such overly active patriots like Dmitry Kiselyov that their methods of struggle for a certain idea sometimes look no better than those whom they criticize so ardently so often. And most importantly, the result is the same: for people who themselves are not accustomed to thinking or are not able to, a certain center of hatred just seems to turn on; and those viewers and listeners who have not forgotten how to think and analyze the information received independently, simply lose confidence and respect for such figures.
Well, finally, really, why do we need this German Hartmann? ... Yes, in general, there is no need, just an outstanding pilot and everything, the best in the world, a historical person. But we don’t need such a story, because we have our own ... So? ...
Or still, I hope the opposite? And do we really need Hartmann? It is necessary for about the same reason, for example, why the rest of the world and the same Americans need our Yuri Gagarin - a communist, a star of Soviet propaganda, also smiled a lot everywhere and often, often against the backdrop of many so hated Soviet characters, but at the same time he really was the first man in space and it was them, the Americans, who were ahead of this.
This is all just our common history, the history of our civilization. With peace and wars, with great inventions and disasters, with achievements and failures, with geniuses and villains. What happened, it was impossible to erase it from history, even if someone doesn’t really like something. But if history is regularly misinterpreted for the sake of certain instantaneous interests, then the main goal of its study in general is lost - the opportunity to learn something based on historical facts.
It is clear that there is a certain accepted line, which, for certain issues, must be strictly adhered to. But, as the old saying goes, "make a fool pray to God, he will break his forehead." Sometimes too zealous and not quite adequate upholding of a certain point of view turns out to be more likely the opposite effect, both in terms of the impact on the audience or listeners, and for the image of the media itself doing it. But the reputation is such that it takes a very long time to build and deserve it, but you can literally break it or lose it at the moment. One big stupid thing or a lie and that’s all, trust is lost. In precisely this way, once considered the standards of journalism for decades, many leading Western publications and television channels are rapidly losing their popularity and trust of the general public, day after day replicating for the sake of someone absolutely illogical or even false, but as if politically correct for a given period of time information, in fact, becoming only a primitive tool of primitive propaganda.
Erich Hartmann, left
On Sunday, October XNUMXth, in one of my favorite TV shows, Vesti Nedeli, with the host Dmitry Kiselyov and from his own lips, there was a harsh condemnation of the publication of a certain Diletant magazine, in which he talked about the German WWII pilot Erich Hartmann. This topic in the News of the Week, which was extremely unexpected for me, was devoted to a whole plot and a fairly large amount of airtime. Even more surprised by the tone and content of the report. The Dilettant magazine for this publication was accused of practically chanting fascist heroes, blackening the memory of the victims of the Great Patriotic War, and propaganda of Nazism.
In principle, I can guess what initial goal Dmitry Kiselyov set for this report, but he also definitely achieved another one - I think that a huge number of people who had never before been particularly interested in German aviation of World War II and had never heard anything about after the publication of the “News of the Week” show, did they find this magazine exactly? and they read this article in it, not excluding me. I wonder why all of a sudden such a commotion on the main federal channel and in the main issue News during the week! But after reading this material, I did not find anything criminal or truly glorifying fascism or trampling the results of the Great Patriotic War in this article. An ordinary historical publication on a specific historical topic, and rather short and incomplete - in any decent encyclopedia much more and more is written about this famous German pilot, apparently the person was really outstanding and deserved it. But someone just really wanted to find fault, or they set such a task. Well, apparently, they tried on Russian central television as they could.
This publication, which attracted the attention of the famous TV presenter RTR, on October 2, 2018, is called “Erich Hartmann - Luftwaffe Legend”. Hartmann is still the official world record holder in the number of enemy aircraft shot down in battle. According to German data, there are as many as 352 of them in his account. Of these, 348 are Soviet and 4 are American (this is according to the "Dilettante", according to some other American data, there are seven or eight of them), which is not surprising - Hartmann fought on the Eastern Front , and so met with the Americans in the air extremely rarely, that is, they were lucky in this sense, we can say. In general, the material of the historical journal Dilettant briefly describes the life and military career of a pilot, who is without a doubt one of the most outstanding combat pilots both in World War II and of all times in general. And not only the author of the article in The Dilettant thinks so, but most military historians, Soviet ones do not exclude this. But the director general of the All-Russian State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company, in this publication, judging by his violent reaction, was outraged by almost everything, but the main thing is that the hero of the article was German and served during the World War II precisely in the Hitler army. As Dmitry Kiselev calculated, more than three hundred shot down Soviet planes are at least two hundred dead Soviet pilots. Well, in general, it’s hard to disagree with the quantity and the fact itself - front, war, death, and so on ...
All this was a huge tragedy for entire nations. But, for example, it doesn’t occur to anyone (I hope) to condemn the Hero of the Soviet Union, the submariner A.I. Marinesco for the sinking of the German transport Wilhelm Gustloff? And on board this ship there were only about 1500 German military personnel, most of whom were evacuated patients and wounded, and all other passengers, according to various sources, from seven to ten thousand people, were civilian refugees, the ship was heavily overloaded. After the disaster, no more than one fifth of all the people on deck survived. But Marinesco attacked an enemy ship leaving the enemy port in a group with enemy warships, and everything that happened after that is a war that does not happen without victims, including innocents. And these Soviet pilots, with whom the German Hartmann fought in the air, were also unlikely to carry civilian passengers or perishable fruits on their planes, and if this German ace himself had hit them in the sight, he would have no doubt as well would have sent him to that light and with his Messerschmitt ... And, fortunately, they also managed to do this often and repeatedly - in the end, the ending of this war is known to everyone.
Also, by the way, Mr. Kiselyov didn’t like the phrase “... German planes, on average, were faster and rose to a higher height than Soviet ones ...” Tables with comparatives were immediately displayed on the TV screen as a refutation technical data of the Messerschmitt BF-109 modification “G”, on which the aforementioned Erich Hartmann was flying, and the Soviet fighter Yak-3 and La-7, which the Germans were clearly superior in many technical data. And it is true. But firstly, here Kiselev somehow missed in the context an important detail in this particular proposal, namely, that German planes were “average” better in technical capabilities, and this “average” comes from the fact that, to Unfortunately, by no means all the Soviet Air Force in the period described above were exclusively represented by the Yak-3, and even more so the La-7, in truth, there were not so many of them in the troops, while the Messerschmitt - 109 ”in various modifications was from the very beginning of hostilities the most massive fighter of the Hitlerite Luftwaffe, it was also widely exported and in the number of produced nearly 35 pieces was the most massive fighter in the world in general. Moreover, the production of this machine itself began back in 000, and he officially went to serve in the Reich Air Force from 1935, while both Soviet fighters described by Kiselyov began to be produced only in the spring of 1937. And secondly, the performance of the German pilot is confirmed once again by these performance characteristics, if, according to Kiselyov, he was fighting with newer and technically better machines than his own, already somewhat outdated Messer. The host of Vesti Nedeki does not credit the very number of aircraft shot down by Hartmann himself, but exclusively Goebbels propaganda, which simply “needed such blond blue-eyed heroes,” and they attributed, they say, hundreds of shot down enemies for the sake of a red word and maintaining the declining morale of the Nazis in the trenches ...
Only somehow Dmitry Kiselyov apparently doesn’t know that in Soviet (and not only) flight schools and the Air Force Academy for some reason the experience and actions of all these “blue-eyed heroes invented by Goebbels propaganda” during the war, and after its end, then for decades carefully disassembled and studied. Apparently, too, they were so seduced by fascist propaganda ... As a matter of fact, the military experience of the German generals Guderian, Manstein, von Bock, Rommel, and many many others was disassembled and adopted, because then the Red Army had an experienced, strong, intelligent opponent there is still something to learn, and even to this day, and not only in the military sphere ...
This was the opinion of outstanding Soviet and Russian scientists and military leaders, but the journalist Dmitry Kiselev does not think so, and not for scientific and practical, but apparently purely for ideological reasons. Although the correctness of these ideas, or rather their interpretation and application, can also be doubted ... By the way, when working on books on the theme of World War II, I had to deal with German archival materials more than once. I don’t presume to say how many planes exactly Erich Hartmann shot down, that’s what I’ve never specifically been interested in, but I know from personal experience that such information in the German armed forces was checked through several channels, if possible. For his merits, this pilot was awarded, among other things, one of the highest possible awards of the Third Reich - the Knight's Cross with oak leaves, swords and diamonds, which in fact are four degrees of this Knight's Cross, and they were assigned separately from each other, each for certain merits, and it was almost impossible to organize without confirmation of the actions then accessible by means of objective control and witnesses, simply on the basis of some propaganda videos or newspaper articles (unlike the USSR, by the way, where similar cases are known and even became the subject of legal proceedings). But even if you imagine the almost impossible that he shot down not three and a half hundreds, but, say, even two hundred aircraft, this figure is still huge!
Both of my grandfathers fought. One, by mum, was a tanker, the other, by dad, pilot, both before and after the war, cadre officers, both served as colonels, both after the war they studied at the academy of armored forces and the Air Force, respectively, and that’s why I know what was studied there first hand. I was interested in the Army and all this concerning from childhood, and accordingly I asked grandfathers about everything as I could. So I’ll continue with the information I received from my grandfathers: the first one, a tanker, started the battle path from the Finnish campaign, it so happened that he then fought a lot on Lend-Lease equipment, ended the war in the Czechoslovak city of Brno with the regiment commander as part of the Second Ukrainian Front, and this regiment was entirely on American Sherman tanks. In the words of his grandfather himself, “these tanks were crappy, both in comparison with ours, and with German ones”, rubber caterpillars often broke, motors burned, etc., but these, they say, were not the worst ones what did we get from the allies. At the beginning of the war, General Lee or the English Matilda came from the United States to the Red Army, and this, grandfather, was “even worse than shit”, but they had to fight on that, their tanks were sorely lacking. To support the infantry in the field, these machines were still somehow suitable, but if necessary, engage in a direct clash even with far from the best and not the newest German tanks or self-propelled guns, these were ready-made iron coffins for the crews.
The second grandfather, who was a pilot, was at the front as a pilot of the notorious Il-2 attack aircraft, but also flew on the Lendlizovskie R-39 Aerial Cobra, though not in battle, but only during the transfer of this equipment from Iran to the USSR. In the Soviet Air Force these fighters were delivered in fairly large quantities. The grandfather-pilot spoke about them about the same as the grandfather-tanker about American tanks. He said that in the US Army they mainly flew blacks (for adherents of tolerance, the specification is African-Americans), the plane was dangerous, it often crashed, while the engine was sort of behind the cockpit, so if it wasn’t very successful landing because of damage, the need “on the belly” or simply with a broken landing gear, which was not uncommon at front-line airfields and in battle, the motor broke off the mounts and, moving forward, literally killed the pilot on the ground, which simply could not happen in other models. This is so, for the information to Mr. Kiselyov and similar specialists that not all of us fought on the excellent T-34/85, IS, or the then latest Yaks and Lavochkins, perhaps partly also from here a huge the number of victories of German tank crews and pilots ... By the way, it was on the Aero Cobra, that is, on the far from the most successful American fighter of that time, in 1943-1944 the Soviet ace pilot, three times the hero of the Soviet Union Alexander Ivanovich Pokryshkin, also counted which 59 personally shot down enemy aircraft plus has confirmed in group battles. Honor and praise be to him. It is interesting, by the way, that after the collapse of the USSR, the number of Pokryshkin’s victories was also called into question by some “historians”, and it was attributed to propaganda, this time Stalin’s, but this, it seems, has such a fate for air aces ...
But we go further - the director general of VGTRK, among other things, didn’t really like the article he saw that Hartmann is depicted in the photo against the background of an airplane with a swastika on its tail and even with a smile. And this photograph, according to Kiselyov, personifies as much as "... contempt for the cultural code of the Russian people, where the memory of the victims of the Great Patriotic War is sacred ..." (quote). I fully and completely support the idea of the sacredness for our people of the memory of the victims of the Great Patriotic War, but the use of precisely these words here and in this context is a clear excess, to say the least ... A certain person had the happiness or misfortune to be born in the German town of Vaysakh, land Wurttemberg, and of military age to reach just in time for the Second World War. Therefore, it is natural that he got into the German army, which then was the same as it was and was doing what it was doing. If he had been born, say, in Lipetsk or Krasnodar, then he would have posed with a smile, most likely not from Messerschmitt with a swastika, but from the same Yak or Aero Cobra with a red star, like Pokryshkin. But everything happened as it happened, and the one who was destined to become the world's best fighter pilot was born German in Germany. Moreover, in my opinion, the fact itself on which side he found himself in that war, however, does not detract from his skill and real achievements. And that same photograph is a historical document - on which he flew, with which he was photographed. He served his country as best he could and the one that was then. And there were millions of such people and, by the way, on both sides. I personally spoke with Soviet and several German veterans, as well as with Americans and Czechs who served in the British Air Force during World War II. I even attended meetings of these people who once stood against each other on opposite sides of the front line. Once it was even a triple meeting of pilots - German, Russian and two Americans. A very interesting impression, but the main thing that I saw, or rather I never saw at all and never at these meetings, is hatred or some kind of anger. Nothing of the kind, but a huge and genuine mutual interest. Many years later, it was interesting for these people to find out how their opponents saw it, and they were sincerely glad to talk and apparently just look at each other no longer through sight ... In the German armed forces during World War II, the total number of convinced Nazis approximately the percentage of the number of convinced communists in the Red Army. And that is a fact. It is simply stupid and dishonest to hang on all these people the label “fascists”.
Now in the so-called anti-terrorist operation zone in eastern Ukraine there are Ukrainian armed forces as “ideological” sharply nationalist (or even Nazi) “volunteer battalions”, which, fortunately for all, are a minority, and the regular army are conscripts there and there is the bulk, and the overwhelming majority of these people fell and further on the basis of rotation they fall into the combat zone directly against their own will. But they are citizens of Ukraine, the one that is now, and this is not their fault. They took the oath and were called up to the regular army of their country. And this same army, under the authority of its government, the one it currently has, is doing what it is doing there .... And their flag is not red, and there are crosses on the tanks ... So now what, we must call them all without exception fascists and Bandera, it is necessary to hate all these people fiercely? ... According to the logic of Mr. Kiselyov, apparently yes. But this is, after all, the same thing that the crazy Kiev authorities are doing today, calling all the inhabitants of Donbass “separatists and terrorists”, urging them to be destroyed and not considered for people. Where is the difference? What good will all these labels lead to entire nations? People are different, times are different, but the system is the same - stupid "black and white" propaganda: it’s us who are right, good, white and fluffy, and there they are “fascists”, “communists”, “untermans”, “ quilted jackets "," Colorado "and so on and so forth ... The principle is still the same, and where it leads is known, so why repeat all this again?
“Why do we need Hartmann?” - raising his hands in his "corporate" gesture, Dmitry Kiselyov asks from the television screen of the Russian state channel, he is supposedly a German, a Galilee fascist, he has a swastika on the plane there and therefore he deserves only hatred and contempt, and we have our heroes . Like this. The logic here is apparently the same as that of Ukrainian nationalists, who burn books, simply because they are in Russian, the content does not interest them. Or, for the same reason, the monuments are demolished - they are Soviet, and everything Soviet is bad by definition, the setting is now this, and God forbid there is still somewhere a star and a sickle with a hammer, this is generally horror-horror, symbols of occupation, an insult to memory of the Ukrainian people and their struggle for freedom ... Or somewhere in the Baltic states - why, they say there from TV screens, to read us some Russian heroes or learn something from them, they are communist occupiers, and we have our own heroes there is. There are, how not to be, and torchlight processions of Waffen-SS veterans begin ...
Here someone may object, they were the invaders, and we are the liberators, it was they who invaded us, and we defended our land. That’s yes, but just don’t forget that the exact same “black and white” propaganda was before, and the soldiers were told that they were fighting for a holy cause, fighting the inhuman tyranny that was about to overwhelm the whole world - and it was in these concepts and these same words, the high command turned to the Germans, and to our Red Army soldiers, and to the troops of the Anglo-American allies. And it was with such thoughts that both went into battle, got into their tanks or planes, with stars or crosses ... Don’t you believe it? Read the newspapers of the time, they are usually in the libraries in the public domain, or the memoirs of the veterans themselves from different angles. And our soldiers were told the same thing in 1956 in Hungary (by the way, my grandfather was also a tanker there), and in 1968 in Czechoslovakia, then in Afghanistan and in other places where the Soviet army didn’t defend its own land, but its military personnel there were simply fulfilling their duty to the motherland, orders of the command and were faithful to the oath. Are these people to blame for something? Pilots, tank crews, paratroopers or motorized rifles? In my opinion, no. Perhaps the leadership of the country and the command are to blame somewhere and for some reason, but ordinary soldiers and officers shed their blood far from home, and today their graves are hit by vandals, simply because there are monuments with a red star above them, from which With the help of exactly the same “black and white” propaganda, in some places they have now made a simply hated symbol of the invaders, nothing more. And to uneducated drunken youths somewhere in Eastern Europe, it doesn’t even matter when and under what circumstances the Soviet soldiers whose graves they smashed were killed, it’s enough that they just have a red star above them, as they were also told on TV, a symbol of hated communism and occupation, although they really know absolutely nothing about either.
What, somehow, is this already far from the original topic, from the article about the Hartmann pilot? No, it's all there. I’m just trying to show such overly active patriots like Dmitry Kiselyov that their methods of struggle for a certain idea sometimes look no better than those whom they criticize so ardently so often. And most importantly, the result is the same: for people who themselves are not accustomed to thinking or are not able to, a certain center of hatred just seems to turn on; and those viewers and listeners who have not forgotten how to think and analyze the information received independently, simply lose confidence and respect for such figures.
Well, finally, really, why do we need this German Hartmann? ... Yes, in general, there is no need, just an outstanding pilot and everything, the best in the world, a historical person. But we don’t need such a story, because we have our own ... So? ...
Or still, I hope the opposite? And do we really need Hartmann? It is necessary for about the same reason, for example, why the rest of the world and the same Americans need our Yuri Gagarin - a communist, a star of Soviet propaganda, also smiled a lot everywhere and often, often against the backdrop of many so hated Soviet characters, but at the same time he really was the first man in space and it was them, the Americans, who were ahead of this.
This is all just our common history, the history of our civilization. With peace and wars, with great inventions and disasters, with achievements and failures, with geniuses and villains. What happened, it was impossible to erase it from history, even if someone doesn’t really like something. But if history is regularly misinterpreted for the sake of certain instantaneous interests, then the main goal of its study in general is lost - the opportunity to learn something based on historical facts.
- Alexey Pishenkov
- http://blogspot.com
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