“What kind of heroism could there be on the western frontiers?! The German crossed the border without hindrance and reached Moscow under the green light. gave up…”
For a long time, this was the belief. Moreover, Stalin authoritatively declared that "we have no prisoners of war, we have traitors." And all the surviving defenders of the Brest Fortress automatically fell into their category. Only during the Khrushchev "thaw" was the prose writer, playwright and journalist Sergei Smirnov able to tell people the truth by collecting material about the heroism of the defenders and presenting it in the book "". And today we want to remember the feat of the defenders of the citadel over the Bug, the courage of the dead and the heroism of the survivors.
It needs to be alive
There are many myths around the Brest Fortress to this day. One of them - none of the defenders are no longer alive. And I bought into this speculation, except that Pyotr Kotelnikov popped up in my memory - a fellow countryman, a Brest resident who went through a prisoner of war camp, unsuccessful escapes, prison. It seems that he and his wife recently celebrated a diamond wedding?
Long live Pyotr Mikhailovich, - Elena Mityukova, head of the scientific expeditionary department of the memorial complex "Brest Hero Fortress", reassured. - I just moved to live with my son in Moscow. About 20 more people are still alive today. Forgive me for this "approximately", it's just that some of them do not answer our letters. It is known for certain that the Russians Ivan Bugakov and Pyotr Bondarev, the Chuvash Nikandr Bakhmisov, the Bashkir Rishat Ismagilov are alive, Valentina Kokoreva-Chetvertukhina lives in the Volgograd region.
The fate of the little-known nurse Valentina is worth taking a closer look at. She celebrated her 100th birthday last August. As a child, Valyusha was predicted to study at the conservatory - she had an excellent voice. How the girl wanted to become an artist! But her father, a doctor, chose the profession for her: “You will still sing your own, treating people is much more important.” And Valya went to the first Leningrad Medical Institute. After graduating, she became a pediatric neurologist, preparing a dissertation. When did it start Soviet-Finnish war, the girl went to the front as a volunteer. In that war, she received the medal "For Courage". Once the wounded and the convoy accompanying them were cut off from their own. The boy commander was confused and did not know what to do. Valya took command and led people out of the encirclement along the forest paths.
Valentina Aleksandrovna compared her further service in Latvia almost with heaven on earth, but this favorable period of life ended very quickly. On June 22, 1941, she woke up from a roar, thought - a thunderstorm, but in fact the war began again. On the 5th day of the bloody battle in the Brest Fortress, where Valentina had been serving for half a year, the Germans found her with the wounded. Then there were concentration camps in Poland, Prussia, Saxony with cold, hunger, humiliation ... Nevertheless, it was then that happiness smiled at her - in a concentration camp she met her love and fate. Doctor Nikolai Kokorev offered her a hand and a heart. Their daughter was born in the camp. Then came the long-awaited victory! But the joy very quickly gave way to another ordeal: the family of prisoners of war doctors were waiting for endless checks, sheer distrust. The couple were not allowed to return to Leningrad, and they settled in the Volgograd region, worked as doctors, raised three daughters, five grandchildren and a great-grandchild. “The gloomy do not live to be 100 years old,” says Valentina Kokoreva-Chetvertukhina. War and captivity failed to break this woman. She looks at life with optimism. The poems that she began to write after the war are full of love, kindness, mood, although no, no, and an alarming flash will flash: “How difficult it is for me to live! From what? I will not say…"
One for all stitched glory
Andrei Kizhevatov, Efim Fomin, Ivan Zubachev... These people are no longer alive, but their names personify courage. Pyotr Gavrilov is in the same row. In 1957, he will be awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, but before the long-awaited event, Pyotr Mikhailovich will have to go through real hell. He, who led the defense of the Kobrin fortification of the Eastern Fort, was captured on the 32nd day of the war. When they brought him to the hospital, he could not even drink water - he was in a state of extreme exhaustion. At the same time, German soldiers testified that just an hour before their capture, when the major was caught in one of the casemates of the fortress, he single-handedly accepted the battle, threw grenades, fired a pistol, killed and wounded several opponents.
After the hospital, Pyotr Mikhailovich was waited for 4 years in concentration camps - until May 1945 he was either in Hammelburg or Ravensbrück. After the Victory, it didn’t get any easier either - Major Gavrilov was repressed. It is not known how it would further fate this man, if not for the book by Sergei Smirnov - Gavrilov was rehabilitated with the restoration of the rank. The major searched for his wife and son lost during the war for many years, but to no avail, and married another woman.
Pyotr Mikhailovich traveled a lot around the country, performed, and visited Brest 20 times in a row. At one of the meetings, a woman approached Gavrilov and reported shocking news - his wife, Ekaterina Grigoryevna, was alive and was in the Kosovo (Ivatsevichi district) nursing home. 15 years after the end of the war, the spouses were destined to meet. It turned out that Gavrilov's wife and son were captured and returned to Belarus after their release. Exhausted by the war, paralyzed Ekaterina Gavrilova was placed in a nursing home and lost contact with her son.
The local press excitedly talked about the ups and downs of the fate of the legendary defender of the fortress. Thanks to this, Nikolai Gavrilov was found - the commander of the unit where the guy served sent a telegram to the Brest Regional Executive Committee. And the family was reunited - Gavrilov took his first wife with him. The second wife looked after her, however, not for long - in December 1956, Ekaterina Grigoryevna died. Gavrilov's son became an artist. By the way, many former defenders of the fortress chose creative professions. People's Artist of the RSFSR became a former private of the 44th rifle regiment Nikolay Belousov. A well-known children's writer is Lieutenant Alexander Makhnach. It was he who was one of the first to be found by Sergei Smirnov.
Among the former defenders of the fortress, it is simply impossible to bypass the name of the Hero of the Soviet Union Mikhail Myasnikov, who at the time of the outbreak of the war was a cadet of driver's courses. On July 5, together with a group of fighters, he managed to escape from the fortress and continue to fight in the ranks of the Red Army. For the defense of Sevastopol, Myasnikov was awarded the high title of Hero.
It is impossible not to mention Praskovya Tkacheva. This woman met the war in the position of the senior nurse of the Brest military hospital, which was based in the fortress. She turned her union card, which later became a museum exhibit, into notebook: on its pages I marked the names of the killed fighters.
In terrible June the stones were burning here
Ukrainian Rodion Semenyuk turned 20 at the start of the war. An important mission fell to his lot in the fortress. The junior sergeant of the anti-aircraft artillery battalion, together with the Red Army soldiers Falvarkov and Tarasov, covered the battle flag of the unit. But it was Semenyuk who wore it on his chest under his tunic and was always afraid that he would be wounded and that the banner would fall into the hands of the enemy. “And then this terrible bombardment, when earthen ramparts came in with a shake, and bricks fell from the walls and ceilings of the casemates. Then Major Gavrilov ordered to bury the banner. They just had time to do it and throw rubbish on the compacted earth, when the Nazis broke into the fort. Tarasov was killed, and Falvarkov was captured along with Semenyuk. (From the book of Sergei Smirnov.)
Rodion Semenyuk tried to escape from captivity three times, but unsuccessfully. And only in January 1945 he was in the ranks of the Soviet Army. In September 1965, he arrived at the fortress, dug up the banner and gave it to the museum. A year later, when the government awarded the heroes of defense, the noble metallurgist of Kuzbass Rodion Semenyuk received the Order of the Red Banner.
One of the first to take the hit fascist troops heroic Brest Fortress. The Germans were already near Smolensk, and the defenders of the fortress continued to resist the enemy.
Defenders of the Brest Fortress. Hood. P.A. Krivonogov. 1951 / photo: O. Ignatovich / RIA Novosti
The defense of the Brest Fortress went down in history solely thanks to the feat of its small garrison - those who did not panic in the first days and weeks of the war, did not run and did not surrender, but fought to the end ...
fivefold superiority
In accordance with the Barbarossa plan, one of the main shock wedges of the invading army ran through Brest - the right wing of the Center group as part of the 4th field army and the 2nd tank group (19 infantry, 5 tank, 3 motorized, 1 cavalry , 2 security divisions, 1 motorized brigade). The Wehrmacht forces concentrated here only in terms of personnel were almost five times superior to the forces of the 4th Army opposing them. Soviet army under the command of Major General Alexandra Korobkova, responsible for covering the Brest-Baranovichi direction. The German command decided to cross the Western Bug with tank divisions south and north of Brest, and the 12th Army Corps of General Walter Schroth.
“It was impossible to go around the fortress and leave it unoccupied,” Field Marshal General Field Marshal, commander of the 4th Wehrmacht Army, reported to the authorities. Gunther von Kluge, - since it blocked important crossings over the Bug and access roads to both tank highways, which were of decisive importance for the transfer of troops, and above all to ensure supplies.
The Brest Fortress is located to the west of the city - in the place where the Mukhavets River flows into the Bug, on the very border. Built in the 19th century, in 1941 it had no defensive value, and the fortifications were used as warehouses and barracks to house units of the Red Army. On the eve of the Great Patriotic War, units of the 28th Rifle Corps (primarily the 6th Oryol Red Banner and 42nd Rifle Divisions), the 33rd Separate District Engineer Regiment, the 132nd Separate Battalion of the NKVD escort troops, as well as regimental schools , transport companies, musician platoons, headquarters and other units. There were two military hospitals on the territory of the Volyn fortification. The border guards of the 9th outpost of the 17th Red Banner Border Detachment served in the fortress.
In the event of the outbreak of hostilities, the quartered units had to leave the fortress and occupy the fortified areas on the border.
“The deployment of Soviet troops in Western Belarus,” wrote General Leonid Sandalov(in June 1941 - Chief of Staff of the 4th Army), - at first was not subject to operational considerations, but was determined by the presence of barracks and premises suitable for troop deployment. This, in particular, explained the crowded location of half of the troops of the 4th Army with all their warehouses of emergency supplies (NZ) on the very border - in Brest and the former Brest Fortress.
Combat units needed at least three hours to leave the fortress. But when the commander of the troops of the Western Special Military District, General of the Army Dmitry Pavlov gave the order to put the troops on alert, it was already too late: about half an hour remained before the start of the German artillery preparation.
Start of the invasion
Despite the fact that on the eve of the war, a significant part of the personnel was employed in the construction of the Brest fortified region, in the fortress on the night of June 22 there were from 7 thousand to 9 thousand military personnel, as well as about 300 families (more than 600 people) of commanders Red Army. The state of the fortress garrison was well known to the German command. It decided that a powerful bombing and artillery strike would so stun the people taken by surprise that it would not be difficult for the assault units to occupy the fortress and carry out its “cleansing”. The entire operation took several hours.
It seemed that the enemy did everything to ensure that this happened. The 45th Infantry Division, a regiment of heavy mortars were advanced from the 12th Army Corps to the border zone opposite the Brest Fortress. special purpose, two divisions of mortars, nine howitzers and two artillery mounts of the Karl system, whose 600-millimeter guns fired concrete-piercing and high-explosive shells weighing 2200 and 1700 kg, respectively. The Germans concentrated their artillery on the left bank of the Bug in such a way that the blows would immediately hit the entire territory of the fortress and hit as many of its defenders as possible. The shots of the special-powered guns "Karl" were supposed not only to lead to huge destruction, but also to demoralize the survivors of the shelling and encourage them to immediately surrender.
5-10 minutes before the start of artillery preparation, German assault groups captured all six bridges across the Western Bug in the Brest region. At 04:15 Moscow time, artillery opened heavy fire on Soviet territory, and advanced units of the invading army began to cross over bridges and boats to the eastern bank of the Bug. The attack was sudden and merciless. Thick clouds of smoke and dust, riddled with fiery flashes of explosions, rose above the fortress. Houses burned and collapsed, servicemen, women and children perished in the fire and under the ruins...
History of the Brest Fortress
Brest-Litovsk became part of Russia in 1795 - after the third partition of the Commonwealth. To strengthen the new borders in St. Petersburg, it was decided to build several fortresses. One of them was supposed to appear on the site of the city of Brest-Litovsk. The solemn ceremony of laying the first stone of the future fortress took place on June 1, 1836, and already in 1842 the Brest-Litovsk fortress became one of the active fortresses of the first class of the Russian Empire.
The fortress consisted of the Citadel and three extensive fortifications, forming the main fortress fence and covering the Citadel from all sides: Volyn (from the south), Terespol (from the west) and Kobrin (from the east and north). From the outside, the fortress was protected by a bastion front - a fortress fence (earth rampart with brick casemates inside) 10 meters high, 6.4 km long and a bypass channel filled with water. The total area of the fortress was 4 square meters. km (400 hectares). The citadel was a natural island, along the entire perimeter of which a closed two-story defensive barracks 1.8 km long was built. The thickness of the outer walls reached 2 m, the inner - 1.5 m. The barracks consisted of 500 casemates, which could accommodate up to 12 thousand soldiers with ammunition and food.
In 1864-1888 the fortress was modernized according to the project of the hero Crimean War General Eduard Totleben and surrounded by a ring of forts 32 km in circumference. On the eve of World War I, the construction of a second ring of fortifications 45 km long began (the future Soviet general Dmitry Karbyshev), but before the outbreak of hostilities, it was never completed.
The Russian army did not have to defend the Brest Fortress at that time: the rapid advance of the Kaiser's troops in August 1915 forced the command to decide to leave the fortress without a fight. In December 1917, negotiations were underway in Brest on a truce at the front between delegations Soviet Russia on the one hand, and Germany and its allies (Austria-Hungary, Turkey, Bulgaria) on the other. March 3, 1918 in the building of the White Palace of the fortress was imprisoned Brest Peace.
As a result of the Soviet-Polish war of 1919-1920, the Brest Fortress became Polish for almost 20 years. It was used by the Poles as a barracks, a military warehouse and a maximum security political prison, where the most dangerous state criminals were kept. In 1938–1939, the Ukrainian nationalist Stepan Bandera served his sentence here, who organized the murder of the head of the Polish Ministry of Internal Affairs and was sentenced to death, which was later commuted to life imprisonment.
September 1, 1939 Nazi Germany attacked Poland. The Polish garrison surrounded in the fortress resisted from 14 to 16 September. On the night of September 17, the defenders left the fortress. On the same day, the liberation campaign of the Red Army in Western Belarus began: Soviet troops crossed the state border in the region of Minsk, Slutsk and Polotsk. The city of Brest, together with the fortress, became part of the USSR.
In 1965, the fortress, whose defenders showed unparalleled heroism in the summer of 1941, was awarded the title of Hero Fortress.
SMIRNOV S.S. Brest Fortress (any edition);
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SUVOROV A.M. Brest fortress on the winds of history. Brest, 2004;
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Brest Fortress… Facts, testimonies, discoveries / V.V. Gubarenko and others. Brest, 2005.
First assault
Of course, the shelling of the barracks, bridges and entrance gates of the fortress caused confusion among the soldiers. The surviving commanders, due to heavy fire, could not penetrate the barracks, and the Red Army soldiers, having lost contact with them, independently, in groups and singly, under artillery and machine-gun fire from the enemy, tried to escape from the trap. Some officers, such as, for example, the commander of the 44th Infantry Regiment, Major Petr Gavrilov, managed to break through to their units, but it was no longer possible to withdraw people from the fortress. It is believed that in the first few hours, about half of those who were in the barracks on its territory managed to leave the fortress. At 9 o'clock in the morning the fortress was already surrounded, and those who remained had to make a choice: surrender or continue the fight in hopeless conditions. Most preferred the latter.
Wehrmacht artillerymen are preparing to fire a 600-millimeter self-propelled mortar "Karl" in the Brest region. June 1941
Pastor of the 45th Infantry Division of the Wehrmacht Rudolf Gschopf later recalled:
“Exactly at 3.15 a hurricane began and swept over our heads with such force that we had never experienced before, or in the entire subsequent course of the war. This gigantic concentrated fire shaft literally shook the earth. Thick black fountains of earth and smoke sprouted like mushrooms above the Citadel. Since at that moment it was impossible to notice the enemy’s return fire, we believed that everything in the Citadel had been turned into a pile of ruins. Immediately after the last artillery salvo, the infantry began to cross the Bug River and, using the surprise effect, tried to capture the fortress with a quick and energetic go. It was then that a bitter disappointment was immediately discovered ...
The Russians were raised by our fire right out of bed: this was evident from the fact that the first prisoners were in their underwear. However, the Russians recovered surprisingly quickly, formed into battle groups behind our companies that had broken through and began to organize a desperate and stubborn defense.
Major General A.A. Korobkov
Regimental Commissar E.M. Fomin
Having overcome the initial confusion, the Soviet soldiers hid the wounded, women, children in the cellars and began to cut off and destroy the Nazis who had broken into the fortress, to build up the defense of the most dangerous areas. In the western part of the Citadel, the fighting was led by lieutenants Andrey Kizhevatov and Alexander Potapov, at the Kholmsky Gate and in the Engineering Directorate - the regimental commissar Efim Fomin, in the area of the White Palace and the barracks of the 33rd engineer regiment - senior lieutenant Nikolai Shcherbakov, at the Brest (Three-arch) gates - lieutenant Anatoly Vinogradov.
Major P.M. Gavrilov
“Ranks were invisible to officers in that hell, but it was like this: whoever speaks skillfully and fights boldly, they went better and respected him better,” recalled the former secretary of the party bureau of the regimental school of the 33rd engineer regiment Fedor Zhuravlev.
On the first day, fighting turned into hand-to-hand combat on all fortifications: western - Terespol, southern - Volyn, northern - Kobrin, as well as in the central part of the fortress - the Citadel.
Lieutenant A.M. Kizhevatov
The Nazis, who broke through to the Central Island and captured the club building (the former church of St. Nicholas), attacked the soldiers of the 84th rifle regiment, at the Terespol gates, the border guards of the 9th outpost, soldiers of the 333rd and 455th rifle regiments attacked the enemy , 132nd separate battalion of escort troops of the NKVD. About the counterattack of the fighters of the 84th Infantry Regiment at the Kholmsky Gate, the testimony of its participant has been preserved. Samvel Matevosyan(in June 1941, Executive Secretary of the Komsomol Bureau of the Regiment):
“When he shouted: “Follow me! For the Motherland! - many are ahead of me. Literally at the exit I ran into a German officer. He was tall, I was lucky that he was also armed with a pistol. In a fraction of a second ... they fired at the same time, he caught my right temple, but he himself remained ... I bandaged the wound with a bandage, our orderly helped me.
The surviving German soldiers were blocked in the church building.
Lieutenant A.A. Vinogradov
"Our position is hopeless"
The morning assault failed. The first victory strengthened the spirit of those who were crushed by the force and surprise of the artillery raid and the death of their comrades. The heavy losses of the assault groups on the very first day of the offensive forced the German command to decide to withdraw its units at night to the outer ramparts of the fortress, surrounding it with a dense ring in order to break the resistance of the defenders with the help of artillery and aviation. The shelling began, interrupted by calls through the loudspeaker to surrender.
Blocked in basements, people, especially the wounded, women and small children, suffered from heat, smoke and the stench of decomposing dead bodies. But the worst test was thirst. The water pipeline was destroyed, and the Nazis kept all approaches to the river or bypass canal under aimed fire. Every flask, every sip of water was obtained at the cost of life.
Realizing that they would no longer be able to save children and women from death, the defenders of the Citadel decided to send them into captivity. Addressing the commanders' wives, Lieutenant Kizhevatov said:
“Our situation is hopeless ... You are mothers, and your sacred duty to the Motherland is to save children. This is our command for you."
He assured his wife:
“Don't worry about me. I will not be captured. I will fight until my last breath, and even when there is not a single defender left in the fortress.”
Several dozen people, including wounded fighters and, possibly, those who had already exhausted their strength for the fight, came under a white flag to the Western Island along the Terespol bridge. On the fourth day of defense, the defenders of the eastern ramparts of the fortress did the same, sending their relatives to the Germans.
Most of the family members of the commanders of the Red Army did not manage to live to see the liberation of Brest. At first, the Germans, after keeping them in prison for a short time, released everyone, and they settled down, as best they could, somewhere in the city or its environs. But in 1942, the occupying authorities carried out several raids, deliberately looking for and shooting the wives, children, and relatives of Soviet commanders. Then the lieutenant's mother was killed Kizhevatova Anastasia Ivanovna, his wife Ekaterina and their three children: Vanya, Galya and Anya. In the autumn of 1942, a three-year-old boy was also killed Dima Shulzhenko, saved by unknown heroes on the first day of the war - he was shot along with his aunt Elena ...
Who knows why the Germans did this: maybe they were taking revenge for their impotence, for the defeat near Moscow? Or were they guided by the fear of inevitable retribution, which they were reminded of by fire-melted casemates of the fortress, which had long been silent by that time? ..
Memories of the Defenders
Photo by Igor Zotin and Vladimir Mezhevich / TASS Newsreel
Any description of the first days of the war, and especially the events in the Brest Fortress, has to be based almost exclusively on the memories of their participants - those who managed to survive. Documents of the headquarters of the 4th Army, and even more so of the divisions that were part of it for the most part lost: burned down during the bombing or, so as not to get to the enemy, were destroyed by staff workers. Therefore, until now, historians do not have accurate data on the number of units that ended up in the Brest “mousetrap” and their quarters, and they reconstruct and even date the battle episodes in different ways. Thanks to the long-term work of the employees of the Museum of the Heroic Defense of the Brest Fortress, opened in 1956, as well as the journalistic investigation of the writer Sergei Smirnov, a whole collection of memoirs was collected. They are hard and scary to read.
“Our apartment was in the Terespol Tower,” recalled Valentina, the daughter of the foreman of the musician platoon of the 33rd Engineer Regiment. Ivan Zenkin. - During the shelling of the Terespol tower, two water tanks were pierced by shells. Water poured from the ceiling onto the stairs, began to flood our apartment. We didn't understand what was going on. The father said: “This is war, daughter. Get dressed, go downstairs, fragments are flying here. And I have to go to the regiment.
Silently stroked my head. So I broke up with my father forever. Over the rumble, roar and smoke, we did not hear or see how the enemies burst into the power plant and began to throw grenades in front of them, shouting:
"Rus, give up!" One grenade exploded near the power plant. Children and women screamed. We were driven out to the banks of the Mukhavets River. Here we saw the wounded Red Army soldiers lying on the ground. Nazis stood above them with machine guns. From the windows of the casemates between the Kholm Gates and the Terespol Tower, the fighters opened fire on the Nazis, who had captured us.
But when they saw women and children, they stopped firing in our direction. “Shoot, why stop? The Nazis will shoot us anyway! Shoot!" - Rising up, shouted one of the wounded Red Army soldiers. In front of my eyes, one of our wounded black-haired soldiers began to be beaten with boots. They shouted, insulted, showing with gestures that he was a Jew. I felt very sorry for this man. I clung to the fascist and began to drag him away. “This is Georgian, this is Georgian,” I repeated…”
Another clear evidence of the courage of the defenders of the fortress left Natalia Mikhailovna Kontrovska I am the lieutenant's wife Sergei Chuvikov.
“I saw,” she said, “what heroism the border guards, fighters and commanders of the 333rd Infantry Regiment showed ... I will never forget a border guard wounded by a machine-gun burst in both legs. When I helped him and the women wanted to take him to the shelter, he protested, asked me to tell Lieutenant Kizhevatov that he could still beat the Nazis while lying at the machine gun. His request was granted. In the afternoon of June 22, when the hurricane artillery fire subsided for a while, we saw from the basement that not far from the commandant's office, among a pile of ruins, lay Tonya Shulzhenko and a little son was crawling near her corpse. The boy was in the zone of constant shelling. I will never forget the fighter who saved Dima. He crawled after the child. He stretched out his hand to pull the boy towards him, and he remained lying down ... Then the two wounded crawled back to Dima, saved him. The kid was injured…”
Heroic Defense. Collection of memories of the heroic defense of the Brest Fortress in June-July 1941. Minsk, 1963;
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Grebenkina A.A. Living pain. Women and children of the Brest garrison (1941–1944). Minsk, 2008.
"I'm dying, but I don't give up!"
On June 24, the defenders of the Citadel tried to coordinate their actions in order to prepare a breakthrough from the fortress in order to go into the forests, to the partisans. This is evidenced by draft order No. 1, the text of which was found in 1951 during search work in the basement of the barracks at the Brest Gates in the field bag of an unknown Soviet commander. The order dealt with the unification of several battle groups and the creation of a headquarters headed by the captain Ivan Zubachev and his deputy regimental commissar Efim Fomin. An attempt to break through was made under the command of Lieutenant Anatoly Vinogradov through the Kobrin fortification on the morning of June 26, but almost all of its participants died or were captured after they managed to overcome the outer ramparts of the fortress.
An inscription on the wall of one of the casemates of the Brest Fortress: “I am dying, but I do not give up! Farewell, Motherland. 20/VII-41” / photo: Lev Polikashin/RIA Novosti
By the end of the third day of the war, after the introduction of reserves into battle (now the units operating here already numbered two regiments), the Germans were able to establish control over most of the fortress. The defenders of the ring barracks near the Brest Gates, casemates in an earthen rampart on the opposite bank of the Mukhavets River and the Eastern Fort on the territory of the Kobrin fortification fought the longest. Part of the barracks, where the defense headquarters was located, was destroyed as a result of several explosions carried out by German sappers. The defenders of the Citadel, including the leaders of the defense, died or were captured (Fomin was shot shortly after being captured, and Zubachev died in 1944 in the Hammelburg prison camp). After June 29, only isolated pockets of resistance and single fighters remained in the fortress, gathering in groups and trying to break out of the encirclement at all costs. One of the last among the defenders of the fortress was a major Petr Gavrilov- it happened on July 23, on the 32nd day of the war.
German soldiers in the courtyard of the Brest Fortress after its capture
Staff Sergeant Sergei Kuvalin, captured on July 1, among other prisoners of war, he worked on clearing the rubble near the Terespol Gate.
“On July 14-15, a detachment of German soldiers, about 50 people, passed by us. When they came up with the gate, an explosion suddenly sounded in the middle of their formation, and everything was shrouded in smoke. It turns out that one of our fighters was still sitting in the ruined tower above the gate. He dropped a bunch of grenades on the Germans, killing 10 people and seriously wounding many, and then jumped down from the tower and crashed to death. Who he is, this unknown hero, we did not find out, we were not allowed to bury him, ”recalled Sergey Kuvalin, who went through many German camps and escaped from captivity at the end of the war.
In 1952, an inscription was found on the wall of the casemate in the northwestern part of the defensive barracks:
"I'm dying, but I'm not giving up! Farewell, Motherland. 20/VII-41".
Unfortunately, the name of this hero also remained unknown ...
Path to immortality
Memorial complex "Brest Hero Fortress" in Belarus Ludmila Ivanova/Interpress/TASS
Easily defeating Poland, France, Belgium, Denmark, Norway, capturing hundreds of cities and fortresses, the Germans for the first time since the beginning of World War II faced such a stubborn defense of a very insignificant fortified point. For the first time they met with an army whose soldiers, even realizing the hopelessness of their situation, preferred death in battle to captivity.
Perhaps it was in Brest, losing soldiers and officers in battles with the defenders of the fortress dying of hunger and thirst, that the Germans began to realize that the war in Russia would not be an easy walk, as the high command promised them. Indeed, as the German army moved east, the resistance of the Red Army increased - and in December 1941, for the first time since the beginning of the war, the Nazis suffered a major defeat near Moscow.
It would seem that the scale of events near the walls of a small border fortress is incomparable with the grandiose battles of this war. However, it was there, near the walls of the Brest Fortress, that the road of unparalleled courage, the feat of those who defended their Fatherland, began. Soviet people, the road that ultimately led us to Victory.
Yuri Nikiforov,
Candidate of Historical Sciences
The garrison of the Brest Fortress was one of the first to take the blow of the German army during the start.
The courage and heroism of its defenders are forever inscribed in the analogues of world history, which cannot be forgotten or distorted.
Treacherous attack
An unexpected assault on the fortress began at 4:00 in the early morning of June 22, 1941 with a hurricane of artillery fire.
Aimed and crushing fire destroyed ammunition depots and damaged communication lines. The garrison immediately suffered significant losses in manpower.
As a result of this attack, the water supply system was destroyed, which further complicated the position of the defenders of the fortress. Water was required not only for the fighters, who were ordinary living people, but also for machine guns.
Defense of the Brest Fortress 1941 photo
After a half-hour artillery attack, the Germans threw three battalions into the attack, which were part of the 45th Infantry Division. The number of attackers was one and a half thousand people.
The German command considered this number to be quite sufficient to cope with the garrison of the fortress. And, at first, the Nazis did not meet serious resistance. The effect of surprise did its job. The garrison ceased to be a single entity, but turned out to be divided into several pockets of resistance that were not coordinated among themselves.
The Germans, breaking into the fortress through the Terespol fortification, quickly passed through the Citadel and reached the Kobrin fortification.
Unexpected rebuff
The greater surprise for them was the counterattack of the Soviet soldiers who were in their rear. The soldiers of the garrison, who survived the shelling, grouped under the command of the remaining commanders, and the Germans received a tangible rebuff.
The inscription of the defenders of the Brest Fortress on the wall photo
In some places, the attackers were met with harsh bayonet attacks, which turned out to be a complete surprise for them. The attack began to choke. And not just choke, but the Nazis had to hold the defense themselves.
Quickly recovering from the shock from the unexpected and treacherous attack of the enemy, the garrison units that found themselves in the rear of the attackers were able to dismember and even partially destroy the enemy. The enemy met the strongest resistance on the Volyn and Kobrin fortifications.
Not most of The garrison was able to break through and leave the fortress. But most of it remained inside the ring, which the Germans closed by 9 o'clock in the morning. Between 6 and 8 thousand people remained inside the encirclement ring. In the Citadel, the Germans were able to hold only some areas, including the club building, which dominated the rest of the fortifications, converted from a former church. In addition, the Germans had at their disposal the dining room of the command staff and part of the barracks at the Brest Gates, which survived after shelling.
The German command allotted only a few hours to take the fortress, but by noon it became clear that this plan had failed. During the day, the Germans had to bring in additional forces left in reserve. Instead of the original three battalions, the group storming the fortress increased to two regiments. The Germans could not use artillery to the full extent, so as not to destroy their own soldiers.
Defense of the Brest Fortress
By the night of June 23, the German command withdrew its troops and shelling began. In between, there was an offer to surrender. About 2 thousand responded to it, but the main part of the defenders preferred resistance. On June 23, the united groups of Soviet soldiers under the command of Lieutenant Vinogradov, Captain Zubachev, Regimental Commissar Fomin, Senior Lieutenant Shcherbakov and Private Shugurov, drove the Germans out of the ring barracks they occupied at the Brest Gates and planned to organize a long-term defense of the fortress, hoping to receive reinforcements.
Brest Fortress, July 1941 photo
It was planned to create a Defense Headquarters, and even a draft Order No. 1 was written on the creation of a consolidated battle group. However, on June 24, the Germans were able to break into the Citadel. large group garrison tried to break through the Kobrin fortification and, although they were able to break out of outside fortresses, most of them were destroyed or captured. On June 26, the last 450 fighters of the Citadel were captured.
The feat of the defenders of the "Eastern Fort"
The defenders of the Eastern Fort held out the longest. There were about 400 of them. Major P.M. Gavrilov commanded this grouping. The Germans went on the attack in this area up to 10 times a day, and each time they rolled back, meeting fierce resistance. And only on June 29, after the Germans dropped an air bomb weighing 1800 kg on the fort, the fort fell.
Defense of the Brest Fortress photo
But even before August, the Germans could not carry out a total cleansing and feel like full masters. Every now and then, local pockets of resistance arose, when shooting from still living soldiers was heard from under the ruins. They preferred death to captivity. Major Gavrilov, who was seriously wounded, was among the latest captured, and this happened already on July 23.
Before visiting the fortress, and at the end of August, all the cellars of the fortress were flooded with water. Brest Fortress - a symbol of courage and steadfastness of Soviet soldiers In 1965, Brest was awarded the title of Hero Fortress.
The famous Brest Fortress has become synonymous with unbroken spirit and resilience. During the Great Patriotic War, the elite forces of the Wehrmacht were forced to spend 8 full days, instead of the planned 8 hours. What motivated the defenders of the fortress and why this resistance played an important role in big picture World War II.
Early in the morning of June 22, 1941, the German offensive began along the entire line of the Soviet border, from the Barents to the Black Sea. One of the many initial goals was the Brest Fortress - a small line in the plan of Barbarossa. The Germans took only 8 hours to storm and capture it. Despite the loud name, this fortification, once the pride of the Russian Empire, turned into a simple barracks and the Germans did not expect to meet serious resistance there.
But the unexpected and desperate rebuff that the Wehrmacht forces met in the fortress went down in the history of the Great Patriotic War so vividly that today many believe that the Second World War began with an attack on the Brest Fortress. But it could happen that this feat would remain unknown, but the case decreed otherwise.
History of the Brest Fortress
Where the Brest Fortress is today, there used to be the city of Berestye, which is mentioned for the first time in The Tale of Bygone Years. Historians believe that this city originally grew around the castle, the history of which has been lost for centuries. Located at the junction of Lithuanian, Polish and Russian lands, it has always played an important strategic role. The city was erected on a cape formed by the Western Bug and Mukhovets rivers. In ancient times, rivers were the main communications for traders. Therefore, Berestye prospered economically. But the location on the very border entailed dangers. The city often moved from one state to another. It was repeatedly besieged and captured by Poles, Lithuanians, German knights, Swedes, Crimean Tatars and troops of the Russian kingdom.
Important fortification
The history of the modern Brest Fortress originates in imperial Russia. It was built by order of Emperor Nicholas I. The fortification was located at an important point - on the shortest land route from Warsaw to Moscow. At the confluence of two rivers - the Western Bug and Mukhavets - there was a natural island, which became the location of the Citadel - the main fortification of the fortress. This building was a two-story building, which housed 500 casemates. There could be 12 thousand people at the same time. Two-meter-thick walls reliably protected them from any weapons that existed in the 19th century.
Three more islands were created artificially, using the waters of the Mukhovets River and a man-made system of ditches. Additional fortifications were located on them: Kobrin, Volyn and Terespol. Such an arrangement suited the generals defending in the fortress very well, because it reliably protected the Citadel from enemies. It was very difficult to break through to the main fortification, and it was almost impossible to bring wall-beating guns there. The first stone of the fortress was laid on June 1, 1836, and on April 26, 1842, the fortress standard was raised over it in a solemn ceremony. At that time it was one of the best defensive structures in the country. Knowing the design features of this military fortification will help you understand how the defense of the Brest Fortress took place in 1941.
Time passed, and weapons improved. The range of artillery fire was increasing. What had previously been impregnable could now be destroyed without even getting close. Therefore, military engineers decided to build an additional line of defense, which was supposed to encircle the fortress at a distance of 9 km from the main fortification. It included artillery batteries, defensive barracks, two dozen strongholds and 14 forts.
unexpected find
February 1942 turned out to be cold. German troops rushed deep into the Soviet Union. The Red Army tried to hold back their advance, but most often they had no choice but to continue to retreat inland. But they didn't always fail. And now, not far from Orel, the 45th Wehrmacht Infantry Division was utterly defeated. We even managed to capture documents from the headquarters archive. Among them, they found a "combat report on the occupation of Brest-Litovsk."
Accurate Germans day after day documented the events that took place during the protracted siege in the Brest Fortress. The staff officers had to explain the reasons for the delay. At the same time, as was always the case in history, they went out of their way to exalt their own bravery and downplay the merits of the enemy. But even in this light, the feat of the unbroken defenders of the Brest Fortress looked so bright that excerpts from this document were published in the Soviet edition of Krasnaya Zvezda to strengthen the spirit of both the front fighters and the civilian population. But history at that time had not yet revealed all its secrets. The Brest Fortress in 1941 endured much more of those trials, which became known from the documents found.
Word to the Witnesses
Three years have passed since the capture of the Brest Fortress. After heavy fighting, Belarus was recaptured from the Nazis and, in particular, the Brest Fortress. By that time, stories about her had become almost legends and an ode to courage. Therefore, interest in this object was immediately increased. The powerful fortress lay in ruins. Traces of destruction from artillery strikes, at the first glance, told experienced front-line soldiers what hell the garrison stationed here had to face at the very beginning of the war.
A detailed survey of the ruins gave an even more complete picture. Literally dozens of messages from participants in the defense of the fortress were written and scratched on the walls. Many came down to the message: "I'm dying, but I don't give up." Some contained dates and last names. Over time, eyewitnesses of those events were also found. German newsreel and photo reports became available. Step by step, historians reconstructed the picture of the events that took place on June 22, 1941 in the battles for the Brest Fortress. The graffiti on the walls revealed something that was not in the official records. In the documents, the date of the fall of the fortress was July 1, 1941. But one of the inscriptions was dated July 20, 1941. This meant that the resistance, albeit in the form of a partisan movement, lasted almost a month.
Defense of the Brest Fortress
By the time the fire of the Second World War flared up, the Brest Fortress was no longer a strategically important object. But since it is not worth neglecting the material resources already available, it was used as a barracks. The fortress turned into a small military town where the families of commanders lived. Among the civilian population permanently residing in the territory were women, children and the elderly. About 300 families lived outside the walls of the fortress.
Because of the military exercises planned for June 22, rifle and artillery units and the highest commanders of the army left the fortress. The territory was left by 10 rifle battalions, 3 artillery regiments, air defense and anti-aircraft defense divisions. Less than half of the usual number of people remained - approximately 8.5 thousand people. National composition defenders would do honor to any UN meeting. There were Belarusians, Ossetians, Ukrainians, Uzbeks, Tatars, Kalmyks, Georgians, Chechens and Russians. In total, among the defenders of the fortress were representatives of thirty nationalities. They were approached by 19 thousand well-trained soldiers who had considerable experience in real battles in Europe.
Soldiers of the 45th Infantry Division of the Wehrmacht stormed the Brest Fortress. It was a special unit. It was the first to triumphantly enter Paris. Soldiers from this division went through Belgium, Holland and fought in Warsaw. They were considered practically the elite of the German army. The 45th division always quickly and accurately carried out the tasks assigned to it. The Fuhrer himself singled her out among others. This is a division of the former Austrian army. It was formed in Hitler's homeland - in the district of Linz. It diligently cultivated personal loyalty to the Fuhrer. A quick victory is expected of them, and they do not doubt it.
Fully prepared for a fast assault
The Germans had a detailed plan for the Brest Fortress. After all, just a few years ago they had already won it from Poland. Then Brest was also attacked at the very beginning of the war. The assault on the Brest Fortress in 1939 lasted two weeks. It was then that the Brest Fortress was bombed for the first time. And on September 22, the whole of Brest was pompously handed over to the Red Army, in honor of which they held a joint parade of the Red Army and the Wehrmacht.
Fortifications: 1 - Citadel; 2 - Kobrin fortification; 3 - Volyn fortification; 4 - Terespol fortification Objects: 1. Defensive barracks; 2. Barbicans; 3. White Palace; 4. Engineering management; 5. Barracks; 6. Club; 7. Dining room; 8. Brest gates; 9. Kholmsky gate; 10. Terespol gates; 11. Brigid Gate. 12. The building of the border outpost; 13. Western fort; 14. Eastern Fort; 15. Barracks; 16. Residential buildings; 17. North-Western Gate; 18. North gate; 19. East gate; 20. Powder magazines; 21. Brigid Prison; 22. Hospital; 23. Regimental school; 24. Hospital building; 25. Strengthening; 26. South gate; 27. Barracks; 28. Garages; 30. Barracks.
Therefore, the advancing soldiers had all the necessary information and a diagram of the Brest Fortress. They knew about the strong and weaknesses fortifications, and had a clear plan of action. At dawn on June 22, everyone was in their places. Installed mortar batteries, prepared assault squads. At 4:15 the Germans opened artillery fire. Everything was very clearly defined. Every four minutes, the line of fire was advanced 100 meters forward. The Germans diligently and methodically mowed down everything that could be obtained. A detailed map of the Brest Fortress was an invaluable help in this.
The bet was made primarily on surprise. Artillery bombardment was to be short, but massive. The enemy needed to be disoriented and not given the opportunity to put up a cohesive resistance. For a short attack from nine mortar batteries, they managed to fire 2880 shots at the fortress. No one expected a serious rebuff from the survivors. After all, in the fortress there were rear guards, repairmen, and families of commanders. As soon as the mortars subsided, the assault began.
South Island attackers passed quickly. Warehouses were concentrated there, and there was a hospital. The soldiers did not stand on ceremony with bedridden patients - they finished off with rifle butts. Those who could move independently were killed selectively.
But on the western island, where the Terespol fortification is located, the border guards managed to orient themselves and adequately meet the enemy. But due to the fact that they were scattered in small groups, it was not possible to hold back the attackers for a long time. Through the Terespol Gate of the attacked Brest Fortress, the Germans broke into the Citadel. They quickly occupied some of the casemates, the officers' canteen and the club.
First failures
At the same time, the newly appeared heroes of the Brest Fortress begin to gather in groups. They draw their weapons and take up defensive positions. Now it turns out that the Germans who have broken through ahead are in the ring. They are being attacked from the rear, with undiscovered defenders waiting ahead. The Red Army purposefully shot officers among the attacking Germans. Discouraged by such a rebuff, the infantrymen try to retreat, but then they are met with fire by the border guards. German losses in this attack amounted to almost half of the detachment. They retreat, and settle in the club. This time already as besieged.
Artillery cannot help the Nazis. It is impossible to open fire, as the probability of shooting your own people is too high. The Germans are trying to break through to their comrades stuck in the Citadel, but Soviet snipers force them to keep their distance with accurate shots. The same snipers block the movement of machine guns, preventing them from moving to other positions.
By 7:30 in the morning, it would seem that the shelled out fortress literally comes to life and completely comes to its senses. The defense is already organized along the entire perimeter. The commanders hastily reorganize the surviving fighters and place them in position. No one has a complete picture of what is happening. But at this time, the fighters are sure that they just need to hold their positions. Hang on until help arrives.
Complete isolation
The Red Army soldiers had no connection with the outside world. Messages sent over the air went unanswered. By noon the city was completely occupied by the Germans. The Brest fortress on the map of Brest remained the only center of resistance. All escape routes were cut off. But contrary to the expectations of the Nazis, the resistance only grew. It was quite clear that the attempt to capture the fortress immediately failed. The advance faltered.
At 13:15, the German command throws into battle a reserve - the 133rd Infantry Regiment. It does not bring results. At 14:30, the commander of the 45th division, Fritz Schlieper, arrives at the site of the Kobrin fortification occupied by the Germans to personally assess the situation. He becomes convinced that his infantry is not able to take the Citadel on their own. Schliper gives the order at nightfall to withdraw the infantry and resume shelling from heavy guns. The heroic defense of the besieged Brest Fortress is bearing fruit. This is the first retreat of the illustrious 45th division since the start of the war in Europe.
The Wehrmacht forces could not just take and leave the fortress as it is. In order to move forward, it was necessary to occupy it. The strategists knew this, and this has been proven by history. The defense of the Brest Fortress by the Poles in 1939 and the Russians in 1915 served as a good lesson for the Germans. The fortress blocked important crossings across the Western Bug River and access roads to both tank highways, which were crucial for the transfer of troops and supplying the advancing army with supplies.
According to the plans of the German command, troops aimed at Moscow were to go through Brest without stopping. The German generals considered the fortress a serious obstacle, but they simply did not consider it as a powerful defensive line. The desperate defense of the Brest Fortress in 1941 made its own adjustments to the plans of the aggressors. In addition, the defending Red Army soldiers did not just sit in the corners. Time after time they organized counterattacks. Losing people and rolling back to their positions, they reorganized and again went into battle.
Thus passed the first days of the war. The next day, the Germans gathered the captured people, and, hiding behind women, children and the wounded from the captured hospital, began to cross the bridge. Thus, the Germans forced the defenders to either let them through or shoot their relatives and friends with their own hands.
Meanwhile, artillery fire resumed. To help the besiegers, two super-heavy guns were delivered - 600 mm self-propelled mortars of the Karl system. It was such an exclusive weapon that they even had their own names. In total, only six such mortars were produced in history. Two-ton projectiles fired from these mastodons left craters 10 meters deep. They knocked down the towers at the Terespol Gate. In Europe, the mere appearance of such a "Karl" at the walls of a besieged city meant victory. The Brest fortress, how long the defense lasted, did not even give the enemy a reason to think about the possibility of capitulation. The defenders continued to shoot back even when seriously wounded.
The first prisoners
However, at 10 a.m., the Germans take their first breather and offer to surrender. This continued in each of the subsequent breaks in the shooting. Persistent proposals to surrender sounded from German loudspeakers throughout the district. This was supposed to undermine the morale of the Russians. This approach has borne some fruit. On this day, about 1900 people came out of the fortress with their hands up. There were many women and children among them. But there were also soldiers. Basically - reservists who arrived at the training camp.
The third day of defense began with shelling, comparable in power to the first day of the war. The Nazis could not but admit that the Russians were defending themselves courageously. But they did not understand the reasons that made people continue to resist. Brest was taken. Help is nowhere to be found. However, initially no one planned to defend the fortress. In fact, it would even be a direct disobedience to the order, which said that in the event of hostilities, the fortress should be immediately abandoned.
The soldiers who were there simply did not have time to leave the facility. The narrow gate, which was the only way out at that time, was under aimed German fire. Those who failed to break through initially expected help from the Red Army. They did not know that German tanks were already in the center of Minsk.
Not all women left the fortress, heeding the exhortations to surrender. Many stayed behind to fight their husbands. German attack aircraft even reported to the command about the women's battalion. However, the fortress never had women's divisions.
premature report
On the twenty-fourth of June, Hitler was informed about the capture of the Brest-Litovsk fortress. On that day, stormtroopers managed to capture the Citadel. But the fortress has not yet surrendered. In the evening of the same day, the surviving commanders gathered in the building of the engineering barracks. The result of the meeting is Order No. 1 - the only document besieged garrison. Because of the assault that had begun, they did not even have time to finish it. But it is thanks to him that we know the names of the commanders and the numbers of the fighting units.
After the fall of the Citadel, the eastern fort became the main center of resistance in the Brest Fortress. The attack aircraft try to take the Kobrin shaft repeatedly, but the artillerymen of the 98th anti-tank division firmly hold the line. They knock out a couple of tanks and several armored vehicles. When the enemy destroys the guns, the fighters with rifles and grenades go into the casemates.
The Nazis combine assaults and shelling with psychological treatment. With the help of leaflets scattered from aircraft, the Germans call for surrender, promising life and humane treatment. Through the loudspeakers they announce that both Minsk and Smolensk have already been taken and there is no point in resistance. But the people in the fortress simply do not believe in it. They are waiting for help from the Red Army.
The Germans were afraid to enter the casemates - the wounded continued to shoot. But they couldn't get out either. Then the Germans decided to use flamethrowers. Brick and metal melted from the terrible heat. These streaks can still be seen on the walls of the casemates today.
The Germans put forward an ultimatum. His surviving fighters are carried by a fourteen-year-old girl - Valya Zenkina, the daughter of a foreman, who was captured the day before. The ultimatum says that either the Brest Fortress, down to the last defender, surrenders, or the Germans will wipe out the garrison from the face of the earth. But the girl did not return. She chose to stay in the fortress along with her.
Current Issues
The period of the first shock passes, and the body begins to demand its own. People understand that they have not eaten anything all this time, and the food warehouses burned down during the very first shelling. Worse than that- The defenders have nothing to drink. During the first artillery shelling of the fortress, the water supply system was disabled. People suffer from thirst. The fortress was located at the confluence of two rivers, but it was impossible to reach this water. Along the banks of rivers and canals are German machine guns. The attempts of the besieged to reach the water are paid with their lives.
The cellars are overflowing with the wounded and the families of command personnel. It is especially difficult for children. The commanders decide to send women and children into captivity. With white flags, they get out into the street and go to the exit. These women did not stay in captivity for long. The Germans simply let them go, and the women went either to Brest or to the nearest village.
On June 29, the Germans call in aircraft. This was the date of the beginning of the end. Bombers drop several 500kg bombs on the fort, but it holds its own and continues to snarl with fire. After lunch, another super-powerful bomb (1800 kg) was dropped. This time, the casemates pierced right through. Following this, attack aircraft broke into the fort. They managed to capture about 400 prisoners. Under heavy fire and constant assaults, the fortress held out in 1941 for 8 days.
One for all
Major Pyotr Gavrilov, who led the main defense in this area, did not surrender. He took refuge in a hole dug in one of the casemates. The last defender of the Brest Fortress decided to wage his own war. Gavrilov wanted to hide in the northwestern corner of the fortress, where there were stables before the war. During the day, he buries himself in a pile of manure, and at night he carefully crawls out to the canal to drink water. The major feeds on the compound feed left in the stable. However, after several days of such a diet, acute abdominal pains begin, Gavrilov quickly weakens and begins to fall into oblivion at times. Soon he is captured.
About how many days the defense of the Brest Fortress lasted, the world will learn much later. As well as the price the defenders had to pay. But the fortress began to acquire legends almost immediately. One of the most popular was born from the words of one Jew - Zalman Stavsky, who worked as a violinist in a restaurant. He said that one day, while going to work, he was stopped by a German officer. Zalman was taken to the fortress and led to the entrance to the dungeon around which the soldiers gathered, bristling with cocked rifles. Stavsky was ordered to go down and take the Russian soldier out of there. He obeyed, and below he found a half-dead man, whose name remained unknown. Thin and overgrown, he could no longer move independently. Rumor attributed to him the title of the last defender. This was in April 1942. It has been 10 months since the beginning of the war.
From the shadow of oblivion
A year after the first attack of the fortification, an article was written about this event in the Red Star, where the details of the protection of the soldiers were revealed. In the Moscow Kremlin, they decided that she could raise the militant ardor of the population, which had subsided by that time. It was not yet a real memorial article, but only a warning about what kind of heroes those 9 thousand people who fell under the bombing were considered. Numbers and some names were announced dead soldiers, the names of the fighters, the results of the fact that the fortress was surrendered and where the army is moving further. In 1948, 7 years after the end of the battle, an article appeared in Ogonyok, which already looked more like a memorable ode to the dead people.
In fact, the presence of a complete picture of the defense of the Brest Fortress should be credited to Sergei Smirnov, who at one time set out to restore and organize the records that were previously stored in the archives. Konstantin Simonov took the initiative of the historian and a drama, a documentary and a feature film were born under his direction. Historians conducted a study in order to get as many documentary shots as possible and they succeeded - the German soldiers were going to make a propaganda film about the victory, and therefore the video material was already there. However, he was not destined to become a symbol of victory, because all the information was stored in the archives.
Around the same time, the painting “To the Defenders of the Brest Fortress” was painted, and since the 1960s, poems began to appear where the Brest Fortress is exhibited as an ordinary entertaining city. They were preparing for a scene based on Shakespeare, but did not suspect that another "tragedy" was brewing. Over time, songs have appeared in which, from the height of the 21st century, a person looks at the hardships of soldiers a century earlier.
At the same time, it is worth noting that propaganda was carried out not only from Germany: propaganda speeches, films, posters that prompt action. This was also done by the Russian Soviet authorities, and therefore these films also had a patriotic character. Courage was sung in poetry, the idea of a feat of small military troops on the territory of the fortress, caught in a trap. From time to time, notes appeared about the results of the defense of the Brest Fortress, but the emphasis was on the decisions of the soldiers in conditions of complete isolation from the command.
Soon, the Brest Fortress, already known for its defense, had numerous poems, many of which went to songs and served as screensavers for documentaries during the Great Patriotic War and chronicles of the advance of troops to Moscow. In addition, there is a cartoon that tells about the Soviet people as foolish children (lower grades). In principle, the viewer is explained the reason for the appearance of traitors and why there were so many saboteurs in Brest. But this is explained by the fact that the people believed the ideas of fascism, while sabotage attacks were not always carried out by traitors.
In 1965, the fortress was awarded the title of "hero", in the media it was referred to exclusively as the "Brest Hero Fortress", and by 1971 a memorial complex was formed. In 2004, Beshanov Vladimir published the complete chronicle of the Brest Fortress.
The history of the creation of the complex
The museum "The Fifth Fort of the Brest Fortress" owes its existence communist party, who proposed its creation on the 20th anniversary of the memory of the defense of the fortress. Funds had previously been collected by the people, and now it only remained to get approval to turn the ruins into a cultural monument. The idea was born long before 1971 and, for example, back in 1965 the fortress received the Hero Star, and a year later a creative team was formed to design the museum.
She did a large-scale work, right up to instructions on what facing the obelisk bayonet should have (titanium steel), the main color of the stone (gray) and the necessary material (concrete). The Council of Ministers agreed to the implementation of the project, and in 1971 a memorial complex was opened, where sculptural compositions are correctly and accurately located and battlefields are presented. Today they are visited by tourists from many countries of the world.
Location of monuments
The formed complex has a main entrance, which is a concrete parallelepiped with a carved star. Polished to a shine, it stands on a shaft, on which, from a certain angle, the abandonment of the barracks is especially striking. They are not so much abandoned as left in the condition in which they were used by soldiers after the bombing. Such a contrast emphasizes the state of the castle. Casemates of the Eastern part of the fortress are located on both sides, and the Central part is visible from the opening. Thus begins the story that the Brest Fortress will tell the visitor.
A feature of the Brest Fortress is the panorama. From the elevation you can see the citadel, the river Mukhavets, on the coast of which it is located, as well as the largest monuments. The sculptural composition “Thirst” is impressively made, praising the courage of soldiers left without water. Since the water supply was destroyed in the first hours of the siege, the soldiers, themselves in need of drinking water, gave it to their families, and the rest was used to cool the guns. It is precisely this difficulty that they mean when they say that the fighters were ready to kill and go over the corpses for a sip of water.
The White Palace, depicted in the famous painting by Zaitsev, is surprising, which even before the start of the bombing in some places was destroyed to the ground. During the Second World War, the building served as a dining room, a club and a warehouse at the same time. Historically, it was in the palace that the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed, and according to myths, Trotsky left the famous slogan “no war, no peace”, imprinting it over the billiard table. However, the latter is not provable. During the construction of the museum near the palace, approximately 130 people were found dead, and the walls were damaged by potholes.
Together with the palace, the ceremonial area is a single whole, and if you take into account the barracks, then all these buildings are entirely preserved ruins, untouched by archaeologists. The scheme of the memorial Brest Fortress designates the area most often with numbers, although it has a considerable length. In the center are plates with the names of the defenders of the Brest Fortress, the list of which was restored, where the remains of more than 800 people are buried, and ranks and merits are indicated next to the initials.
Most visited attractions
The eternal flame is located near the square, over which the Main Monument rises. As the diagram shows, the Brest Fortress rings this place, making it a kind of core of the memorial complex. The Post of Memory, organized under Soviet rule in 1972, has been serving near the fire for many years. Yunarmiya members serve here, whose shift lasts for 20 minutes and you can often get to a shift change. The monument also deserves attention: it was made from reduced parts made from plaster at a local factory. Then casts were taken from them and enlarged 7 times.
The engineering department is also part of the untouched ruins and is located inside the citadel, and the Mukhavets and Western Bug rivers make an island out of it. A fighter was constantly in the Office, who did not stop transmitting signals over the radio station. And so the remains of one soldier were found: not far from the equipment, until the last breath, which did not stop trying to contact the command. In addition, during the First World War, the Engineering Department was only partially restored and was not a reliable shelter.
The garrison temple has become an almost legendary place, one of the very last to be captured by enemy troops. Initially, the temple served as an Orthodox church, however, by 1941 there was a regiment club there. Since the building was very profitable, it was it that became the place for which both sides fought hard: the club passed from commander to commander and only at the very end of the siege remained with the German soldiers. The temple building was restored several times, and only by 1960 was included in the complex.
At the very Terespol Gates there is a monument to "Heroes of the Border ...", created according to the idea of the State Committee in Belarus. A member of the creative committee worked on the design of the monument, and the construction cost 800 million rubles. The sculpture depicts three soldiers defending themselves from enemies invisible to the eye of the observer, and behind them are children and their mother giving precious water to a wounded soldier.
underground stories
The dungeons, which have an almost mystical aura, have become an attraction of the Brest Fortress, and legends of various origins and content circulate around them. However, whether they should be called such a loud word - still needs to be figured out. Many journalists made reports without first checking the information. In fact, many dungeons turned out to be manholes, several tens of meters long, not at all “from Poland to Belarus”. The human factor played its role: those who survived mention the underground passages as something big, but often the stories cannot be substantiated by facts.
Often, before looking for ancient passages, you need to study the information, thoroughly study the archive and understand the photographs found in newspaper clippings. Why is it important? The fortress was built for certain purposes, and in some places these passages may simply not exist - they were not needed! But there are certain fortifications worth paying attention to. A map of the Brest Fortress will help with this.
Fort
When building forts, it was taken into account that they should only support infantry. So, in the minds of the builders, they looked like separate buildings who are well armed. The forts were supposed to protect the areas between themselves, where the military was located, thus forming a single chain - the line of defense. In these distances between the fortified forts, there was often a road hidden on the sides by an embankment. This mound could serve as walls, but not a roof - there was nothing to keep it on. However, the researchers perceived it and described it as a dungeon.
The presence of underground passages as such is not only not logical, but also difficult to implement. The financial costs that the command would incur absolutely did not justify the benefits of these dungeons. Much more effort would have been spent on the construction, but it would be possible to use the moves from time to time. You can use such dungeons, for example, only when the fortress was defending. Moreover, it was beneficial for the commanders that the fort remained autonomous, and did not turn into part of a string that provides only a temporary advantage.
There are memoirs certified in writing by the lieutenant, describing his retreat with the army through the dungeons, spread out in the Brest Fortress, according to him, for 300 meters! But in the story, it was mentioned in passing about the matches with which the soldiers lit the way, but the size of the passages described by the lieutenant speaks for itself: such lighting would hardly be enough for such a distance, and even taking into account the way back.
Old communications in legends
The fortress had storm drains and sewers, which made it from the usual heap of buildings with large walls a real stronghold. It is these passages of technical purpose that can most correctly be called dungeons, since they are made as a smaller version of the catacombs: a network of narrow passages branched over a long distance can only let one person of average build through. A soldier with ammunition will not pass through such cracks, and even more so, several people in a row. This is ancient system sewerage, which, by the way, is located on the scheme of the Brest Fortress. A person could make his way along it to the place of clogging and clean it so that this branch of the highway could be used further.
There is also a lock that helps maintain the right amount of water in the fortress moat. He, too, was perceived as a dungeon and took the form of a fabulously large manhole. You can list numerous other communications, but the meaning will not change from that and they can only be considered dungeons conditionally.
Ghosts avenging from the dungeons
Already after the fortification was handed over to Germany, legends about cruel ghosts avenging their comrades began to be passed from mouth to mouth. Such myths had a real basis: the remnants of the regiment hid for a long time through underground communications and shot at night watchmen. Soon, the descriptions of the unmissable ghosts began to frighten so much that the Germans wished each other to avoid the Frau Mit Avtomat, one of the legendary avenging ghosts.
Upon the arrival of Hitler and Benito Mussolini, everyone's hands were sweaty in the Brest Fortress: if ghosts fly out of there while these two brilliant personalities pass by the caves, trouble cannot be avoided. However, this, to the considerable relief of the soldiers, did not happen. At night, the frau did not cease to be atrocious. She attacked unexpectedly, always swiftly, and just as unexpectedly hid in the dungeons, as if she was dissolving in them. From the descriptions of the soldiers it followed that the woman had a dress torn in several places, tangled hair and a dirty face. Because of her hair, by the way, her middle name was "Kudlataya".
The story had a real basis, since the wives of the commanders were also under siege. They were trained to shoot, and they did it masterfully, without a miss, they had to pass the TRP norms. In addition, being in good physical shape and being able to handle various types of weapons was in honor, and therefore some woman blinded by revenge for her loved ones could well do this. One way or another, the frau mit automatic was not the only legend among German soldiers.
In 1965, the Brest Fortress was awarded the honorary title "Fortress-Hero". Today, on a memorable anniversary, we dedicate an article to the feat of the defenders of the Brest Fortress. It would seem that many books and articles have been written about the Brest Fortress, but even today the authorities prefer to remain silent about the real causes of the tragedy of the beginning of the Great Patriotic War.
DECREE OF THE PRESIDIUM OF THE SUPREME SOVIET OF THE USSR
ON AWARDING THE HONORARY TITLE "HERO FORTRESS" TO THE BREST FORTRESS
Repelling the perfidious and sudden attack of the Nazi invaders on the Soviet Union, the defenders of the Brest Fortress, in exceptionally difficult conditions, showed outstanding military prowess, mass heroism and courage in the fight against the Nazi aggressors, which became a symbol of unparalleled stamina. Soviet people.
Noting the exceptional merits of the defenders of the Brest Fortress to the Motherland and in commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the victory of the Soviet people during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945, to award the Brest Fortress with the honorary title of "Fortress-Hero" with the award of the Order of Lenin and the medal " Golden Star».
Chairman of the Presidium Supreme Council the USSR
A. MIKOYAN
Secretary of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR
M. GEORGADZE
The chronology of the events that took place in the Brest Fortress is well known and we do not aim to present these events - which can be read on the Internet, we just want to focus on what led to these events.
"June, 22. The Truth of the Generalissimo” (Moscow, “Veche”, 2005) is the title of the book by A.B. Martirosyan, which provides the most adequate explanation of the reasons for the military catastrophe of the USSR in the summer of 1941 published to date.
The publisher's review that accompanies the imprint of this book states: “For the first time, the revealed fact of the tacit substitution by the USSR high military command of the official national defense plan for a strikingly similar to the “Plan for the defeat of the USSR in the war with Germany” (Marshal Tukhachevsky) “illiterate scenario of entry into war, based on the criminal idea of an immediate counter-frontal counter-blitzkrieg with a static front with a “narrow ribbon”.
This review sets out clearly and extremely briefly the guilt of the leadership of the People's Commissariat of Defense of the USSR (it was headed by S.K. Timoshenko, now mostly remembered only by historians) and the General Staff (it was headed by G.K. Zhukov, now elevated to the rank of "Marshal of Victory" for the crowd ), who behind the scenes, largely on the basis of their oral directives and agreements with “their people” in the districts, replaced the official plan to repel aggression from Germany with their own gag in the spirit of M.N. Tukhachevsky - creatures of L.D. Trotsky.
The official plan was based on the ideas of B.M. Shaposhnikov about covering the border line with relatively small forces concentrated directly on it, and about deploying the main forces in echeloned battle formations at some distance from the border line, which excluded both the possibility of defeating them with one massive surprise strike, and the possibility of breaking through a fairly wide front and quick exit aggressor "on the operational space" in the unprotected rear.
Although the de jure plan based on the ideas of B.M. Shaposhnikov continued to operate until June 22, 1941, inclusive, but in fact, a different plan was put into practice, according to which, during the threatened period, under various pretexts, the troops of the border districts were massively transferred from their places of deployment closer to the state border for actions according to the plan of an immediate response "blitzkrieg ".
This plan supposedly provided for the defeat of the aggressor groupings in a meeting engagement "in an open field" and at the lines of deployment of the aggressor's main forces, and not on pre-prepared lines of defense, followed by a counteroffensive after the defeat of the aggressor groupings.
Due to the fact that the official plan for preparing to repel aggression was sabotaged, and a mafia-corporate plan was put into practice allegedly preparing for a reciprocal "blitzkrieg", the groups of the Workers 'and Peasants' Red Army deployed in the immediate vicinity of the state border were put under attack and defeated massive Wehrmacht strikes in the very first hours of the war, and the Soviet front as a whole became disorganized and uncontrollable for the next few weeks.
This led to the military-strategic catastrophe of the USSR in the summer of 1941. A skeptic may object that the substitution of one plan for another could not be carried out without appropriate documentary support for the activities of the mafia-corporate plan, alternative to the official one.
However, even if the plan actually implemented was not officially approved, this does not mean that the People's Commissariat of Defense and the General Staff did not develop different kind alternative options to the official plan that existed in the rank of "drafts" and "working materials".
Such documents in the system of secret office work during the work of headquarters, research institutes, design bureaus, etc. organizations are produced in abundance, but since they are neither official nor accounting documents, they are mostly destroyed when they are no longer needed. And from them there are only entries in the registers of accounting for secret documents and acts on their destruction, practically saying nothing about their content.
Therefore, in the office work system of the General Staff, one of such, as it were, alternative options in relation to the official plan could be developed legally and could become an actually implemented plan, and then was destroyed as some kind of “working material”. In addition, the skeptic should be aware that about 40 years later, the entry of Soviet troops into Afghanistan was launched on the basis of a decision by the leadership of the USSR, and at the same time, the relevant operational documents were not previously developed at the General Staff.
The operation was carried out as an improvisation and the appropriate orders were given at the pace of the development of the situation, on the basis of reports on the situation. Of course, the introduction of troops into Afghanistan at the end of 1979 was “not the same” scale, since it affected only part of the troops of one of the military districts of the USSR, and in the spring and summer of 1941, all military districts of the country were involved in preparations for the war and, in features along the western border.
However, this is not the case when a large-scale effect is felt: in 1941, in all border military districts, on the basis of identical instructions from the People's Commissariat of Defense and the General Staff, actions identical in nature were carried out.
But as for the mobilization plans of the state, they could be a common component for the official plan based on the ideas of B.M. Shaposhnikov, and for the mafia-corporate plan based on the fabrications of M.N. Tukhachevsky. At the same time, I.V. Stalin about the General Staff and the People's Commissariat of Defense evading the official plan was essentially no one:
Firstly, both plans (official - sabotaged and unofficial - implemented on the basis of mafia-corporate principles) were generally known only to top military leaders in Moscow who were directly involved in each of the plans, and in military districts to commanders of units and others officials official and unofficial plans were reported only "as regards" each of them, and therefore, for the most part, they were not able to correlate one plan with another and distinguish between practically implemented activities corresponding to each of the plans.
Secondly, the behavior of the command of the districts was determined not only by official discipline, but also by their personal relations with representatives of the higher command in Moscow. In other words, key positions were held by “their own people” bound by some kind of mutual responsibility, although they were approved in positions by I.V. Stalin and the leadership of the country as a whole.
Thirdly, if someone on the ground even guessed that something was being done to the detriment of the country's defense capability, then by his official position he could know only particulars, and not the whole picture as a whole.
Fourth, on February 3, 1941, special departments of the Main Directorate State Security The NKVD of the USSR in parts of the armed forces were liquidated, and their functions were transferred to the Third Directorate of the People's Commissariats of Defense and the Navy (this decision suggests that I.V. Stalin was more likely to be overly trusting than maniacally suspicious; or else - not as powerful as most people think about it).
Those. as a result of the third and fourth, there was no one to bring all deviations from the official plan together, to identify and expose sabotage and sabotage in the People's Commissariat of Defense and in the General Staff. And as a result of the fourth, report that S.K. Timoshenko and G.K. Zhukov sabotage the official plan for preparing the country to repel aggression and put into practice some kind of gag, it was possible only in essence by S.K. Timoshenko and G.K. Zhukov with all the ensuing consequences for the reporter.
Investigation by A.P. Pokrovsky
A.B. Martirosyan reports that after the end of the war, a survey of commanding officers of the western military districts (as of June 22, 1941) was started on the topic of what and from whom they received instructions immediately before the start of the war and immediately after it began.
Those. although during the war Stalin took the position of S.K. Timoshenko and G.K. Zhukov about placing full responsibility for the catastrophe in the summer of 1941 on General D.G. Pavlov and considered it good "not to change horses at the crossing", organizing the Headquarters, through which he personally managed the war in addition to the General Staff and the People's Commissariat of Defense, perhaps sharing only with B.M. Shaposhnikov (while he was in power), and not all others dedicating to his vision the matrix of possibilities and the course of matrix-egregorial processes.
However, after the war I.V. Stalin returned to the topic of responsibility for June 22, 1941 and taking measures to avoid the repetition of something similar in the future.
The investigation was conducted by the head of the military scientific department General Staff Armed Forces of the USSR, Colonel-General A.P. Pokrovsky.
Alexander Petrovich Pokrovsky (1898 - 1979), was born on October 21, 1898 in Tambov. At the age of 17 he was drafted into the Russian army, graduated from the ensign school, served in spare parts and in the Novokiev Infantry Regiment on the Western Front. In 1918 he joined the Red Army. In the years civil war commanded a company, battalion and regiment.
In 1926 he graduated from the M.V. Frunze Military Academy, in 1932 - the operational department of this academy, and in 1939 - the Academy of the General Staff of the Red Army. In between studies, he served at the headquarters of divisions and military districts. In 1935 he headed the headquarters of the 5th Rifle Corps, in 1938 he became deputy chief of staff of the Moscow Military District, from October 1940 - adjutant, then adjutant general of the Deputy People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR Marshal Budyonny.
In the Great Patriotic War: Chief of Staff of the Main Command of the South-Western Direction (at Budyonny: July 10 - September 1941)). After the removal of Budyonny and Timoshenko's arrival there, he was appointed to the North-Western Front as chief of staff of the 60th (from December 1941 - 3rd shock) army (October-December 1941), commanded by Purkaev.
And from there he was transferred to the headquarters Western front, on which (later - on the Third Belarusian), he worked throughout the war. First, in the role of chief of operations, then for some time as chief of staff of the 33rd Army, and then again in operations and deputy chief of staff of the front at Sokolovsky.
And then (after the dismissal of Konev, when Sokolovsky became commander of the front), he became the chief of staff of the front and already remained in this position from the winter of 1943 until the end of the war.
After the war, chief of staff of the military district, since 1946 head of the Main Military Scientific Directorate - assistant chief of the General Staff, in 1946 - 1961 deputy chief of the General Staff.
This is a manifestation of I.V. Stalin's interest in what actually happened in 1941 in the pre-war period and in the initial period of the Great Patriotic War, could be one of the reasons why the bureaucracy (including the military) liquidated I.V. Stalin and L.P. Beria, although the ongoing investigation into the algorithms of the 1941 disaster was not the only reason for their liquidation.
Post-war words and a hint of I.V. Stalin that the principle of "the winners are not judged" may know exceptions - frightened and activated many who "have a stigma in the cannon."
Until now, the materials of the commission of A.P. Pokrovsky were not published.
Still, it was not the personal factor that played the decisive role: in one place of his book, A.B. Martirosyan writes that the tragedy of the summer of 1941 was programmed by prehistory. A.B. Martirosyan points to this sometimes very verbosely, and repeating himself.
But if we state what he describes in his own words, correlating with the factology of that era, then we get such a picture. All higher military education (academic) in the 1920s was usurped by the Trotskyists and this situation continued until the collapse of the USSR in 1991.
They, with their idea of world revolution and revolutionary war as a means of exporting the revolution were supporters of what later became known as the "blitzkrieg" and was implemented by Hitler repeatedly over the period from September 1, 1939 to June 22, 1941 inclusive.
With these ideas of "blitzkrieg" they punched the brains of students of military academies. And some of the students of the academies, becoming teachers in military schools, composted the brains of their cadets with the same ideas - future commanders of the level from a platoon and above.
The problem of neutralizing aggression in the form of a blitzkrieg against their country and its armed forces was not worked out by them and was not allowed in training courses as supposedly not relevant for the USSR during the period they were in power, since they intended to attack first, carrying " world revolution»; and after the Trotskyists began to be "pressed", from the beginning of the 1930s. and even more so after the defeat of the conspiracy of M.N. Tukhachevsky and Co. at the end of the 1930s, for them the resolution of this problem was not only not relevant, but became hostile to their conspiratorial policy, since the possible defeat of the Red Army during the blitzkrieg carried out against the USSR was a prerequisite for them to coup d'etat and coming to power.
As a result of this, the layers of the military conspiracy, which were more deeply conspiratorial and not liquidated in 1937, purposefully prepared the military defeat of the USSR in the war with Germany: and for starters, they needed to ensure the inability of the Red Army to withstand the first blow of the blitzkrieg. Therefore, consideration of the essence of the problem of repelling aggression in the form of a blitzkrieg was replaced by idle talk in the spirit of the concept of a counter-reciprocal blitzkrieg promoted by M.N. Tukhachevsky, his associates and followers.
An analysis of various kinds of "strangeness" in the course of hostilities on the Soviet-German fronts shows that sabotage of the conduct of the war and sabotage by some of the staff officers and senior officers stopped only after Stalingrad and the Battle of Kursk, when it became clear that the victory of the USSR and the defeat of Germany was a question time, regardless of the number of casualties on both sides.
In addition, the training system in military schools and academies of the Red Army was built on the principles of coding pedagogy and was predominantly textual and bookish, rather than practical (at least in educational and game forms), as a result of which it massively produced zombies with basic and higher military education on on the basis of the ideas of blitzkrieg and the actualization of the illusion of a supposedly real possibility of suppressing aggression in the form of a blitzkrieg with one's own retaliatory blitzkrieg.
Stuffed with such nonsense, zombies in ranks from colonels to generals made up the majority of the top command staff of the Red Army in the pre-war period. And this military ideological environment was a good remedy disguises of the structures of the Trotskyist conspiracy that continued to operate, since both the participants in the conspiracy and their uninitiated entourage were carriers of the same false-false world outlook.
So both the initiates and the non-initiates acted uniformly in line with the same algorithm of the development of the situation, which had no alternative for that period of historical time. The exceptions were people who think independently, both in the highest echelon of the command staff, and in the middle and lower. But they were a minority that "didn't make the weather." In the highest command staff, these were S.M. Budyonny, K.E. Voroshilov, B.M. Shaposhnikov and some others whom we do not know.
However, since they did not form the worldview in general and the understanding of the nature of the war among the command staff of the 1920s-1930s. and directly in the pre-war period, then in the initial period of the war they found themselves without a social base in the troops, as a result of which, relying on zombies stuffed with all kinds of nonsense, they could not realize their ideas adequate to life and the course of the war, since the psyche of those fed by the Tukhachevites was stuffed with military algorithms , incompatible with ideas adequate to that war.
In addition, in the summer of 1941, a fair proportion of the personnel were demoralized and sought to surrender in the hope of sitting out in German concentration camps, as the parents of many of them successfully did during the war of 1914-1918.
Forced defense of the Brest Fortress
"Hushing up" is a fair word in relation to the Khrushchev times and the present.
This does not mean that from the time of Khrushchev to today no one talks about the feat of the defenders of the Brest Fortress. Nevertheless, neither Russia nor Belarus raises the real reasons that forced the defense of the Fortress - about replacing the strategy of a systematic withdrawal to the fortified areas with the Trotskyite blitzkrieg strategy, about educating appropriate personnel by Trotskyists in the army.
They are silent about those who drove 4 divisions into a plot of 20 square meters. kilometers at a distance of several hundred meters from the border. No one planned to defend, to defend this very citadel. The very purpose of the fortress - not to let the enemy inside makes it a mousetrap for the garrison. It is as difficult to leave the fortress as it is for the enemy to get into it.
The garrison of the city of Brest at the beginning of the war consisted of three rifle divisions and one tank division, this is not counting parts of the NKVD troops.
The approximate number of personnel is 30-35 thousand people. In the fortress itself there were: the 125th rifle regiment without the 1st battalion and a sapper company, the 84th rifle regiment without 2 battalions, the 333rd rifle regiment without the 1st battalion and rifle company, the 75th separate reconnaissance battalion, 98th separate anti-tank division, 131st artillery regiment, headquarters battery, 31st automobile battalion, 37th separate communications battalion and a number of other formations of the 6th rifle division; 455th rifle regiment without the 1st battalion and engineer company (one battalion was in a fort 4 km northwest of Brest), 44th rifle regiment without 2 battalions (were located in a fort 2 km south of the fortress) 158th automobile battalion and rear units of the 42nd division.
In addition, the fortress housed the headquarters of the 33rd district engineer regiment, the district military hospital on Hospital Island, a border outpost and a separate 132nd NKVD battalion. In total, there were about 9,000 military personnel in the fortress.
Naturally, the troops did not have the task of defending the fortress, their task was to occupy the fortified defense lines (like all other troops of the Western Front) and prevent the Germans from breaking through along the highway to Minsk, three rifle and one tank divisions could defend a sector of the front in 30-40 kilometers. The troops began to defend the Brest Fortress, which was used as winter quarters, because they could not leave the citadel.
Question: who is to blame for the fact that such a mass of troops was crowded in the closed space of the fortress? Answer: Commander of the Western Special Military District, General of the Army D.G. Pavlov. It cannot be said that no one understood all the danger hanging over the garrison of Brest.
From the memoirs of General Sandalov, the former chief of staff of the 4th Army:
“After all, according to the district plan, only one rifle battalion with an artillery division was intended to defend the fortress itself. The rest of the garrison had to quickly leave the fortress and take up prepared positions along the border in the army zone. But the capacity of the fortress gates was too small. It took at least three hours to withdraw the troops and institutions located there from the fortress ... Of course, such a placement of the corps must be considered temporary, caused by a lack of housing stock. With the construction of the barracks, we will reconsider this issue ...
Pavlov probably managed to convince the Chief of the General Staff. A few days later we received an official written order confirming everything that Pavlov had said orally. The only "concession" to us was permission to place one rifle regiment of the 42nd division outside the Brest Fortress and place it in the Zhabinka area.
- Well, - Fyodor Ivanovich Shlykov sighed heavily, - now we have neither the second echelon nor the reserves in our army. We no longer need to travel east of Kobrin: nothing of ours is left there ...
In the spring of 1941, the Brest garrison was replenished with a new rifle division. Yes, the tank brigade that was there before, having turned into a tank division, increased numerically four times. In a word, a huge number of troops accumulated in Brest. And the district hospital still remained in the fortress.
Part of the storage facilities had to be adapted to accommodate the personnel and even some of the forts of the fortress, blown up in 1915, had to be restored. In the lower floors of the barracks, four-tiered bunks were arranged.
On the night of June 14, I alerted the 6th Infantry Division. The day before, the commander of the 28th Rifle Corps, Major General V. S. Popov, conducted the same alarm in the 42nd Rifle Division. Summing up the results of these two alarms, we unanimously expressed the desire for the withdrawal of the 42nd Infantry Division to the Zhabinka area and for the construction of two or three emergency exits within the walls of the fortress.
Later, when our proposal was rejected by the district commander, General Popov spoke in favor of withdrawing the 42nd division to the camp on the territory of the Brest artillery range, but the district leadership prevented this as well.
General Pavlov, commander of the 4th Army Korobkov and others were shot in July 1941, and after N.S. Khrushchev was rehabilitated due to the absence of corpus delicti in their actions. It is curious that one of the charges was the death of the garrison of the Brest Fortress, moreover, Pavlov himself admitted his guilt:
From the protocol
"one. Defendant Pavlov. The accusation against me is understandable. I do not plead guilty to participating in an anti-Soviet military conspiracy. I have never been a member of an anti-Soviet conspiratorial organization.
I plead guilty to the fact that I did not have time to check the fulfillment by the commander of the 4th Army, Korobkov, of my order to evacuate troops from Brest. As early as the beginning of June, I gave the order to withdraw units from Brest to the camps. Korobkov, however, did not comply with my order, as a result of which three divisions were defeated by the enemy when leaving the city.
Here's how, it turns out that the order to leave the fortress was given at the beginning of June, which is not surprising, because. measures to bring troops to combat readiness began to be taken precisely at the beginning of June 1941.
Surprisingly different. General Korobkov denies that he received such an order at all, it seems to be true (see Sandalov's memoirs.)
"Defendant Korobkov. The order to withdraw units from Brest was not given by anyone. I personally have not seen such an order.
Defendant Pavlov. In June, on my orders, the commander of the 28th Rifle Corps, Popov, was sent with the task of evacuating all troops from Brest to the camps by June 15.
Defendant Korobkov. I didn't know about it. This means that Popov should be prosecuted for not following the order of the commander.”
Conclusion:
Thus, specific perpetrators have not yet been identified, both for the Brest Fortress and for the entire Western Front. Materials of the investigation by A.P. Pokrovsky remain unpublished because the Trotskyists are still in power. Also, the root of the problem is not revealed. Trotskyism is not publicly described as a phenomenon by official psychology.
In the education system, historians do not give an idea of the psychology of Trotskyism, which led to huge human losses at the beginning of the war and in general throughout the history of Russia.
Ordinary people did everything they could in the conditions of the ideological inconsistency of the Trotskyist commanders, the outright betrayal of some of them. The defense of the Brest Fortress remains an unprecedented feat in the eyes of grateful descendants in the most difficult conditions of the onset of the fascist aggressor and the betrayal of the Trotskyist elite.
Youth Analytical Group