"The idea of ​​betrayal never left ...": 22 June 1941 in three versions

On every anniversary of the greatest, perhaps, tragedy in the history of our Fatherland - the treacherous attack of Nazi Germany and its many allies, heated debate erupts with renewed vigor over the causes of the terrible losses and defeats that our army and our country suffered literally in the very first days this war. It should be noted that their interpretation undergoes more and more serious changes over the years - from the explanation of the June collapse as a “fateful combination of circumstances” and “the suddenness of an enemy strike” in the Soviet years to attempts to attribute all the blame for what happened personally to Stalin and other leaders of the USSR for “perestroika” time. Perhaps the time has come to voice another version, which has already been put forward, but only “in an undertone,” as not a very likely assumption. Yes, it may well seem shocking to some, but it is this version that makes it possible to explain most logically and reasonably most of the events of that fateful day.





As a matter of fact, the idea that no “accidents" or even miscalculations in the leadership of the army and criminal negligence of a certain number of its highest ranks, but their conscious betrayal, treason, led to bitter losses and a crushing defeat of the first days, weeks, months of the Great Patriotic War Homeland, already voiced, and more than once. Therefore, in no way trying to ascribe the laurels of the discoverer to myself, I’ll try to simply put the maximum number of fragments of the “mosaic” known to us into a single whole and bring as much evidence as possible in favor of this particular hypothesis. Believe it or not is everyone's personal business.

June 22 in three versions

And we will start, perhaps, with the fact that we recognize: to talk about the first day of the war, as the moment when events developed perfectly (or even approximately) equally throughout the entire Soviet border, attacked by the Nazis and their satellites, from the Barents Sea to the Black Sea would be completely incorrect. And, above all, because on June 22, it turned out completely differently for the ground forces of the Red Army, the Soviet Navy and the border troops, which were part of the NKVD. It would seem, if you believe in the miserable tales that “before the war, Stalin frightened everyone so that they were even afraid to look sideways”, then the very first strike of the Wehrmacht would have to overturn and scatter everyone who stood in defense of our Motherland. There it was!

The state border of the USSR was guarded by more than 600 border posts. For their suppression and destruction plan "Barbarossa" allotted from 20 to 40 minutes. Horseradish all over the Aryan face! Of the 485 attacked in the first minutes and hours of the war, not one of the outposts left without an order! The shortest time - up to a day, 257 of them lasted. In 45 places, the heroes in green caps fought for more than two months. The frontier post No. 1 under the command of Alexander Sivachev was taken by the Nazis after 12 hours of fierce battle, on the field of which three German tanks remained dead and lay two corpses of "superhuman" corpses, the conquest of Russia for which ended without beginning. Of the 19 and a half thousand Soviet border guards who had met the Nazi invasion forever at a military post, 16 thousand remained ...

However, this was the system controlled by the “omnipotent” Lavrenty Beria. Maybe that's why he "ignored Stalin's bans"? Moreover, so much so that his subordinates at the front lines did not meet the enemy with open mittens, but having well-equipped positions - with full profile trenches, firing points and minefields? No, it doesn’t take shape ... Admiral Nikolai Kuznetsov, Commander-in-Chief of the USSR Navy, also for some reason didn’t shake in fear of the Leader’s wrath, but took, and announced in advance readiness No. 1 in the units and formations of all fleets and flotillas subordinate to him without exception. The result - on June 22, it was precisely the sailors who suffered practically no losses. In any case, not a single bomb fell on any ship, although naval bases were one of the first targets for Goering vultures. Moreover - having repelled the enemy’s attempt to break into our land, the Danube Flotilla warriors attacked Hitler’s Romanian allies on their territory on June 25, capturing the city of Kilik-Veke and destroying hundreds of enemy soldiers and officers, losing only 5 people killed! And who bombed Berlin in August 1941? Again - naval aviation, not army aviation, which, alas, by that time had practically ceased to exist. Why? It's time to start talking about it.

"The thought of betrayal did not leave ..."

Almost all of the aircraft that the Red Army had in the western direction was mercilessly destroyed by the enemy on the very first day of the war. The Wehrmacht command reported to Berlin about 800-900 Soviet military aircraft, either burned directly at airfields, or unhindered by airborne bombardment, such as, "whole squadrons of bombers taking off without fighter cover." (Memoirs of the chief of the General Staff of the Wehrmacht, Franz Halder) Why did this happen? Perhaps we will get an answer to this question by listening to another participant in those events - retired lieutenant general Dolgushin, who served in the air regiment deployed in the Grodno region in those days. According to him, "in the evening of June 21, I received an order to remove all weapons and ammunition from the aircraft and to hand them over to the warehouses." The order came from the commander of the district troops and it should be carried out strictly. The unsuccessful attempt to return everything to the place, undertaken the next morning, could no longer help anything - German bombs exploded one after the other. Pilots were left without airplanes. Subtitled words belong to just Dolgushin ...


Is it any wonder after this that among the convicts and executed on October 28, 1941 in Kuibyshev 25 top commanders of the Red Army, at least a third had the most direct relation to aviation. At the same time, they didn’t put to the wall “switchmen” on whom they wrote off the terrible rout, but people of a much higher rank — like lieutenant generals Smushkevich, Loktionov, Rychagov. Those who were supposed to prepare Soviet aircraft in this war. And he prepared ... And at the same time commanders of the aviation of the Kiev Special, Baltic and Western military districts. However, in the West, the deputy commander went on trial - his boss prudently shot himself. After that, according to the definition of some historians, a real “pogrom” was carried out in the Air Force of the Red Army. The purge was total — and the reason for it was not at all the desire of the leadership of the country and the party to “recoup for June 22nd,” but a clear understanding that the cause of the defeat that had befallen our combat aircraft could only be a perfectly conscious betrayal.

The fact that the wildest order, which led to the useless death of all the aviation of the Western Military District, was not at all an accident or “reinsurance”, other tragic events unfolding in this direction leave no doubt. Troops locked in the Brest Fortress, German artillery shells tearing to shreds the bodies of soldiers who were carelessly sleeping in the barracks, who were not supposed to be there at that moment. The complete collapse of command and control, chaos and confusion ... German tanks, already breaking into Minsk on June 28, passing through Wehrmacht, almost without encountering any resistance from Belarus, which God himself created to keep the enemy there for months, relying on forests and swamps ... all this nightmare there are very specific culprits. And the most important of them is the commander of the Western Military District, Army General Dmitry Pavlov. By the example of this far from bright person, we will move on to the main part of our conversation - the story of those who almost ensured Hitler a victory in 1941.

“Negligence” with a smack of treason

Shot on July 22, 1941, together with the chief of staff and the chief of communications of the district, as well as several other commanders, for “negligence and failure to perform official duties” Pavlov in 1957, of course, was rehabilitated by Khrushchev’s personal decision, like his colleagues. I really wanted to once again emphasize Lysy's "paranoid bloodthirstiness" of the Leader, who "executed the innocent for his own sins." Just order now to do with the testimony of Pavlov himself, who later told about his conversations with another rather murky character - army general (later marshal) Kirill Meretskov. In the process of such, these two figures discussed an extremely entertaining topic: the question that in the event of Hitlerite Germany’s attack on the USSR and its victory in this war, “it will definitely not be worse”. Broken testimony? Self-talk? Sure no.

Every step of Pavlov’s action in the first days of the war is not just “negligence”. This is a diversion, a brilliantly conducted combination of surrendering to the enemy a whole military district! About his order to disarm aviation has been said above. But how to evaluate the fact that Pavlov deliberately did not comply with the order until June 15 to withdraw all troops from Brest? As a result, 45 thousand people - two rifle divisions and one tank, with all technique and weapons were literally wiped off the face of the earth by German artillery fire in minutes! Pavlov met the beginning of the war ... lounging in a box at a performance in the Minsk House of Officers. At this time, the troops followed to the summer camps as pioneers on vacation - without communications and ammunition. The units leaving Minsk were allowed to take ... 15 rounds per rifle, the so-called “guard norm"! Many unit commanders learned about the beginning of the war from Molotov’s speech at 12 noon and had no idea where the superior command was, how to contact him and what to do now. Strategic outcome? Two terrible and bloody "cauldrons", the complete collapse and destruction of the Western Front. The Wehrmacht on July 16, 1941 burst into Smolensk, from where a direct road to Moscow opened.

Say: "So it was everywhere in those days"? No, not everywhere! Yes, the Red Army retreated and suffered huge losses on all fronts. However, in the South-West and North-West directions, commanded by the "illiterate horses" Budyonny and Voroshilov, the Germans were not able to drive a single regiment into the full circle in the first month of hostilities - not like divisions or corps. Yes, they were advancing - but far from such a dizzying speed, and even at the same time they received from time to time very sensitive teeth. And let's finally forget the Khrushchev-Zhukovsky nonsense that "Stalin did not give the command to prepare for war"! Already after the death of the Leader, at the end of the 50s the General Staff of the Soviet Army conducted a survey of the surviving marshals and generals, who occupied command posts on June 22. All of them, one and all - army generals Baghramyan, Purkayev, Abramidze, generals Poluboyarov, Sobennikov, Shumilov, unanimously confirmed: there was an order! Someone received it earlier, someone later, but all - no later than June 18-20, 1941. These people in those days commanded units no lower than the division, or even higher. Do not believe their words, I see no reason. The order was! That's just not all rushed to execute it.


Where something similar happened in the Western military district ... What do you think - Pavlov was the only one? To this day, many researchers are perplexed - what exactly bought not just life and freedom, but also general's stripes (later the Marshal star) Meretskov, who was released, according to reliable information, on Stalin’s personal order? I’ll venture to suggest - by the surrender of the accomplices who survived and remained at rather large positions in the Red Army in the "military conspiracy." The ability to destroy all potential traitors was probably more important at that moment to the Supreme than the miserable life of one - already exposed. On this, see, and agreed. And Stalin always kept his word.

They were not finished off in 1937

The events of June 22, 1941, as well as the entire first period of the Great Patriotic War, are just concrete evidence that the conspiracy of the military, declared by our liberal rehabilitators as "an invention of the executioners from the NKVD" and "paranoia of Stalin", actually existed ! Moreover, most likely, there were several such conspiracies (possibly interconnected, “flowing” into one another). First of all, it is Trotskyist. Comrade Trotsky quite openly said that in the event of a war with Hitler, he had to “succumb”, “give Ukraine away,” after which “arrange a revolution in Germany itself” and “take everything back”! Rave? Do not believe? But why - if exactly such a combination Lev Davidovich associates perfectly turned in 1918! Before they had time to eat plenty of Ukrainian lard and bread in Berlin, they received an explosion that destroyed their own empire. The Petliurites, who were subsequently calmly kicked out by the Bolsheviks, quickly got into Kiev, which was left without the supervision of the Teutons. Everything worked out! It is clear that the Third Reich was far from Kaiser Germany, but Trotsky’s plans and his associates cannot be called completely insane either.

Both Meretskov and Pavlov went through the "school of Spain", like many subsequently bitterly mourned by the anti-Stalinists "shot commanders." It’s just that an increasing number of historians have recently come to the conclusion that Spain was precisely permeated through and through by the Trotskyist underground, which turned it into a “forge of cadres” for its own nominees. And, by the way, it was the dominance of like-minded Trotsky that led the Republicans to complete military collapse, in which Pavlov himself played a very definite role. However, the civil war in Spain is a separate issue, so far back to the "native aspens." The fact that the Tukhachevsky conspiracy existed, there is no doubt today, practically, no more. Another question is that besides him and the same Uborevich, other candidates for military dictators of the USSR (which, incidentally, would not have existed in this situation), there was most likely also a small cart. There were characters of a smaller rank, but also with a large number of rhombuses in the buttonholes. It was they who, in time, "fell to the bottom" and overtook the "great purge" of 1937 - the "Stalinist satraps" without the iron "proof" were not just shot or put in prison, they were not removed from their posts ... And on June 22, 1941 decided that finally it was their time ...

The same Pavlov during the investigation told not only about his criminal orders on the eve of the war and in its first days. He, for example, told how, while still being the chief of the General Staff and deputy People’s Commissar of Defense, he participated in the falsification of the mobilization plan of the USSR and the like. He acted at the same time, of course, not alone. Is it worth it to be surprised after the disaster on June 22? And if there was no “case of the military” process? There is no doubt - without Stalin's decisive actions in 1937, the Great Patriotic War could have turned out to be many times more terrible defeats and losses for our country.