74 years ago the Second World War ended, a conflagration that developed fundamentally on the Soviet-German front, where the most important and decisive battles were fought that meant the radical turn of the war and that cracked the spine of the Werhmacht , the Armed Forces of Nazi Germany, the most powerful military military complex created by the human species. Of the 783 German divisions defeated during this war, 607 were on this front, where 77,000 aircraft were also killed and 48,000 tanks and 167,000 guns destroyed, as well as 2,500 warships. 75% of the Werhmacht. Today, the world should recognize that thanks to the courage and enormous spirit of sacrifice of Russia and the other nations that made up the Soviet Union, humanity was not enslaved by Nazi-fascism. Remember what happened in the world arena shortly before the war.
Hitler, the Führer
74 years ago, on April 30, Adolf Hitler committed suicide when Soviet troops had cornered him in the bunker where at the end of the war he had sought useless refuge during the battle for Berlin.
His meteoric career, from the Imperial Army to the Führer of Germany, is achieved thanks to the support of the great world financial capital, which saw in him enough attributes of strength and rudeness, necessary to control the revolutionary effervescence that was brewing in the German people. His initial triumphs earned him the admiration of politicians and intellectuals from around the world, including the Italian poet Gabriele D'Annunzio and some Nobel Prizes such as Alexis Carrel and Khut Hamsun; Edward VIII, King of England, was forced to abdicate for being a follower of the Führer; the former NATO Secretary, Lunz, was a member of the Dutch Nazi Party; Henry Ford was, possibly, the American who contributed most to the development of Nazism.
Despite not being a German by birth, Hitler was appointed Chancellor of the Reich, in a country with a very nationalistic people, thanks to the letter signed by seventeen big bankers and industrial magnates, who demanded this from President Hindenburg. Once in power, Hitler formed the General Council of New Germany, composed of Krupp, owner of the largest steel mills; Simens, electricity magnate; Thyssen, tycoon of the coal mines of the Ruhr; Reinhardt, Chairman of the Observation Board of the Commercial Bank; Schrodar, banker and financier linked to US capital; Fisher, President of the Central Banking Association and banking companies. This body was the one that really governed Germany and in it were the forces that pushed the world to World War II.
This is how things happened and not as in the fantastic story they tell us, according to which a paranoid took power in a country of great libertarian traditions and great thinkers and artists, and established a personal dictatorship that led as a herd of blind to the inhabitants of Germany to the war. The West closed its mouths, eyes and ears, although not pockets, before the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany and postulated the policy of appeasement, which allowed Hitler to seize half of Europe almost without firing a shot.
The English conservative historian Sir Wheeler Bennet writes: "There was the hidden hope that the German aggression, if it could be channeled eastwards, would consume its forces in the Russian steppes, in a struggle that would exhaust both belligerent parties." This dangerous Politics almost ends up dismembering those who sponsored it, since Hitler, before taking a step towards the East, gave it to the West. The devil pays badly to his devotees.
The wars of the pre-war
Ethiopia
Italy, whose voracity was stimulated by believing itself swindled in the division of the world that the imperialist powers made in 1870, began to covet Ethiopia, at that time called Abyssinia. He used a "civilizing mission" as the undisputed reason. Mussolini asked Mac'Donald, Prime Minister of England, for his opinion, and he replied: "English women are proud of their husbands' amorous adventures on the condition that they act discreetly. . Therefore, act with great tactics, we will not oppose. "
Italy began the war of aggression against Ethiopia from Eritrea and Somalia. Their supplies, 350,000 soldiers and 14,500 officers, 510 aircraft and 300 tanks, crossed without any difficulty the Suez Canal, which at that time belonged to an Anglo-French consortium. The USSR proposed in the League of Nations that Italy be declared an aggressor country and that Ethiopia be helped to repel the aggression, but they ignored it. "If total sanctions had been applied, Mussolini's mobilization would have been stopped altogether," writes C. Hull, then Secretary of State of the United States, in his memoirs. On the contrary, Italy acquired strategic material in this country, especially oil.
The crossing of the Rhine
In 1936, Hitler broke the Treaty of Versailles by crossing his troops across the Rhine, Germany's demilitarized zone. France accepted that the German Army reached its borders because it was paralyzed by the policy of appeasement. "Adolf Hitler was allowed to win the first battle of World War II without firing a single shot," writes Sir Wheeler Bennet.
Spain
Subsequently, the fascists fixed their interest in Spain. The triumph of the Popular Front in the parliamentary elections of that country was something that the world right could not allow. On July 18, 1936, General Francisco Franco initiated the uprising of the so-called Spanish nationalists. Hitler and Mussolini sent transport planes to move Franco's troops from Morocco to Spain. Between 1936 and 1939 310,000 foreign soldiers, including 150,000 Italians, 90,000 Moroccans, 50,000 Germans and 20,000 Portuguese, arrived to fight in the nationalist ranks. The policy of nonintervention, declared by England and France, was to prohibit the sale of arms to the Republic of Spain, and proved to be of great help to Franco who, at the same time, acquired 12,000 Ford trucks and 1,800,000 tons of gasoline. that the Texaco of the "neutral North America" and the English Shell sold him on credit during the war. Franco argued: "Without American oil, without American trucks, without American credits, we would never have won the war." At the end of March 1939, Franco defeated the Republic.
The USSR was the only country that sold arms to the Republic of Spain and helped organize the Spanish Popular Army. The International Brigades from fifty-three countries were also very helpful in the fight against Nazi-fascism and for democracy. In them they fought personalities of the stature of Ernest Hemingway, César Vallejo, George Orwell, Palmiro Togliatti and others.
The Spanish Civil War was the bloodiest war that existed before the Second World War, lasted for 986 days and if the democratic forces were defeated it was because there were a number of factors, especially of an external order, that made this fatal event possible.
Austria
The first direct victim of Nazi Germany was Austria. One sunny spring day, on March 12, 1938, Germany invaded Austria and annexed it. Everything happened while the British government offered a lunch to former Ambassador Von Ribbentrop, who had just been appointed Foreign Minister of the Third Reich. Ribbentrop reassured Lord Halifax, the English Chancellor, explaining that it was only a question of reuniting the Germans, and that once this thorny problem had been settled, the way was open for Anglo-German understanding.
The "Anschluss", that is, the transformation of Austria into a province of the Third Reich, was an appetizer in the expansionist plans of Nazism. The territory of the Reich grew by 17%, its population by 10%, the Wehrmacht suddenly increased by 50,000 soldiers and officers, and the Austrian economy and industry began to work to satisfy the imperial appetites of German revanchists.
The Prime Minister of England, Chamberlain, who was not prepared to fight against Germany, told the English foreign policy committee: "What happened should not force the English government to change policy, on the contrary, recent events have fortified its convinced of the fairness of this policy and the only regret is that this course had not been undertaken before. "Germany immediately began to build highways that led to the Czech, Hungarian and Yugoslav borders. Czechoslovakia was thus gripped by the new borders.
The Münich confabulation
In September 1938 the Münich ceremony was signed, which transferred to Germany the strategic region of the Sudetenland, belonging to Czechoslovakia. Hitler claimed for Germany Sudetenland, where were the main military fortifications of Czechoslovakia, to be populated mostly by Germans. In this way, empires raffle the destiny of the weakest nations; In this case, the weaknesses and shortcomings of England and France colluded with Hitler's ambitions.
Czechoslovakia emerged after the First World War as a consequence of the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Mutual Assistance Pact, signed between France and Czechoslovakia, guaranteed its existence. There was also the Czech-Soviet Treaty, according to which, in the case of an aggression against Czechoslovakia, the USSR undertook to fight against the aggressor if France complied with the Mutual Assistance Pact. On the other hand, Great Britain undertook to fight alongside France in the case of a war against Germany.
Captain Wiedemann, Hitler's envoy, informed Lord Halifax, Chancellor of Great Britain, that the Führer was angry and that there would be disastrous consequences if the problem of the Sudeten were not solved. Halifax replied: "Tell him that I hope to live until the moment when the fundamental goal of all my efforts is realized: to see Hitler with the English king together on the balcony of Buckingham Palace."
Chamberlain met with Hitler to "achieve an Anglo-German agreement," which would definitively solve the Czech problem. He told Hitler that Germany and England should be "the pillars of peace in Europe and the bulwarks against communism." After three hours of conversation with Hitler, Chamberlain accepted the transfer of the Sudetenland to Germany. He asked for time to consult with his cabinet and with Paris, which he argued that if the Sudetenland were delivered to Germany, the desired arrangement with the Füher would be achieved and "the existing difficulties could be cushioned and agreements reached on other problems." Czechoslovakia, the one that they recommended to yield to Germany the parts of the Sudeten where they lived more than 50% of Germans and to annul the pacts with France and the USSR, was not taken into account. In return for this delivery, England and France were committed to guarantee the new borders. The answer must be immediate, since Chamberlain would meet Hitler on September 22.
President Beneš rejected Chamberlain's proposal because the Soviet Union confirmed that he was willing to help Czechoslovakia in the event that France did not do so and that it would have the backing of Moscow in the League of Nations in the event that Prague requested assistance to that organism. England and France presented an ultimatum: "If the Czechs are grouped with the Russians, the war could become a crusade against the Bolsheviks. Then it would be very difficult for the governments of England and France to remain on the sidelines. "On the morning of September 21, the Czechs accepted the ultimatum. Hitler then demanded that before September 28 the Sudetenland should be part of the Third Reich and, at the request of Chamberlain, extended the deadline until October 1.
When Lord Halifax delivered this demand to the Ambassador of Czechoslovakia, Jan Masaryk, he explained: "Neither the English Prime Minister nor I want to give him any advice regarding the memorandum ... The Prime Minister is persuaded that Hitler only wants the Sudetenland, if he succeeds. He will not claim anything else. " The dialogue continued like this, Masaryk: "And you believe that?"; Lord Halifax: "I have not told you that the Prime Minister is convinced of that"; Masaryk: "If neither you nor the Prime Minister want to give us any advice on the memorandum, then what is the role of the Prime Minister?"; Lord Halifax: "The mail and nothing else"; Masaryk: "I must understand that the Prime Minister has become a messenger of the murderer and robber, Hitler"; Lord Halifax, a little disturbed: "Well, if you like, yes."
Hitler proposed the holding of a conference between England, France, Germany and Italy. Czechoslovakia, which in that conclave lost a fifth of its territory, a quarter of its population and half of its heavy industry, was not invited.
On September 30, the Czech delegation, who waited impatiently in the lower floor of the meeting, was verbally informed of the fate of their country. Their delegates claimed outraged by the monstrous resolution, to which they were answered: "It is useless to argue! It is already decided."
Chamberlain returned to London. He proudly brandished a role that, he said, "ensured peace for a generation." To reaffirm his words, he quoted the phrase of Henrique IV, from Shakespeare: "From the nettle of dangers we will bring out the flowers of salvation." newspaper Izvestia of Moscow reminded him the following day the reply that follows the same sentence: "The company you have committed is dangerous, the friends you have listed me are insecure, and the same moment has been badly chosen. Your whole conspiracy is too light to weigh more than serious difficulties. "
Half a year later, the German troops entered Prague before the impotent gaze of England and France, guarantors who did not lift a finger to help Czechoslovakia. Politics that until now has not changed and that favors the aggressor.
The Molotov Ribbentrop Pact
As a result of the Great Crisis of capitalism, which began in 1929 and affected the postwar world like no other economic phenomenon, the struggle for the new colonial distribution of the world began. As analyzed by Stalin: At the time the world could be divided into imperialist aggressor powers and aggressed imperialist powers. The first ones, who had nothing and demanded everything, attacked the latter, who possessed everything. For this, Germany, Italy and Japan left the League of Nations, formed the Axis alliance and signed the Anti-Komintern Pact.
The aggressed powers, although they were economically and militarily much stronger than the aggressors, yielded and yielded positions. The reason for this behavior was to give air to the aggression until it becomes a German-Soviet conflict; at the same time, they remain outside the conflict. They hoped that Hitler would fulfill the promise to liquidate communism, press him to go farther and farther east, open the possibility of attacking the Soviet Union through the Baltic countries, and put the matter on hold. to undertake the creation of a system of collective security against Nazi-fascist aggression. They incited the Axis nations to attack the USSR in the hope that the war would deplete each other mutually. Then they would offer their solutions and dictate their conditions. The belligerent countries, whose strengths would have been destroyed as a result of a long battle between them, would have no choice but to accept them. An easy and cheap way to achieve your goals.
On July 23, 1939, Molotov, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union, proposed to Great Britain and France to send a military commission to Moscow, with the purpose of reaching an agreement that would prevent the German aggression against Poland. Although the war was on the verge of bursting, on August 11, nineteen days later, the mission arrived in Moscow. It was headed by people who had no power or authority to discuss anything or sign any specific military agreement. The delegation never answered the fundamental concern of Moscow: in order to face Germany, Soviet troops had to pass through Polish or Romanian territory, without this condition the participation of the Soviet Union in a military alliance with England and France was impossible. .
On August 14, Admiral Drax, Chief of Mission, acknowledged: "I think our mission is over"; however, he proposed a new meeting after three or four days. On August 23, Voroshilov, Minister of Defense of the USSR, warned the commission: "We can not wait for Germany to defeat Poland so that it can then launch against us. In the meantime, you would be on your borders holding back ten German divisions. We need a springboard from which to attack the Germans, without him we can not help you. "In the silence of the delegates, he added:" Last year, when Czechoslovakia was on the edge of the abyss, we did not get a single signal from France. The Red Army was ready to attack, but that signal never arrived. Now the governments of France and England have prolonged these conversations futilely and for too long. It was necessary to obtain a clear response from Poland and Romania on the passage of our troops through their territories. "
Shortly thereafter, the Soviet government accepted the German proposal to conclude a non-aggression agreement that, since May 1939, Germany had repeatedly raised. On August 23, 1939, the USSR signed the Non-Aggression Pact with Germany. The USSR acted with great caution to prevent being dragged into a conflict that it did not seek or desire. I also knew that France and England were holding secret talks with Germany in order to conclude an agreement directed against the Soviet Union.
By signing this pact, the Soviet government had no illusions. Marshal Zhukov maintained that it was assumed that he was not freeing the USSR from being attacked and added: "At no time did I listen to Stalin reassuring words in relation to the Non-Aggression Pact." The criticisms of the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact have the purpose of absolving those responsible for the outbreak of war. Later, when the US, England and the USSR formed the anti-Nazi coalition, many relevant politicians in the West valued it positively.
The Second World War
After the delivery of Czechoslovakia to Germany, Hitler demanded the return of the Polish Corridor, the handover of the port of Danzig and that Poland gave him extraterritorial powers to build motorways and railroads through Polish territory. Later, it annulled the pact of nonaggression signed with Poland and resigned to the Anglo-German naval agreement, later it began to reclaim the colonies that were snatched to him by France and England after the First World War.
On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. A few days later, England and France declared war on Germany. These events began the Second World War. The "Blitzkrieg" was the war strategy that gave great success to the Wehrmacht. It consisted in concentrating a great amount of forces in narrow areas of the front, with which it acquired absolute superiority, both of soldiers and instruments of war. The Polish Army was defeated in five weeks.
After the defeat of Poland, what became known as the "Boba War" developed. The Anglo-French army, which had done nothing during the German attack on Poland, continued to do nothing while Germany concentrated large numbers of troops on the western border of France and continued to do nothing when Germany, between April 9 and the May 10, 1940, seized Norway, Denmark, Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg. The French correspondent R. Dorgeles writes: "I was amazed at the tranquility prevailing there. Those who operated the artillery on the Rhine looked calmly at the German trains carrying war material on the opposite bank, our aviators flew over the smoldering chimneys of the Saar, without throwing bombs. Obviously the supreme command's main concern was not to unnerve the enemy. " When the Minister of Aviation of England was asked to throw incendiary bombs on the massive forests of Germany, he replied: "What's wrong, it's impossible, it's private property. I just need to be asked to bomb the Ruhr. "
On May 14, 1940, the German tanks broke the French defensive lines, in the region of Sedan, and rushed towards the west, panic seized the French troops. On May 18, the 9th French army was defeated and its commander captured. The road to La Mancha was left open. On May 20, the German motorized divisions reached the shores of La Mancha. On May 27 the evacuation of the English forces began from Dunquerke, which was successful thanks to the motorized divisions commanded by Kleist stopped their march. This fact has a political explanation, eliminated France, Hitler hoped to agree with Britain to achieve the creation of a common front against its main enemy, the Soviet Union. It is believed that for that negotiation, Rudolf Hess, Germany's second strongest man, flew to Britain and parachuted near Lord Halifax's residence. I was looking for contacts with England to achieve the division of spheres of influence in the world.
On the morning of June 14, Nazi troops entered Paris and paraded through the Champs-Elysees. Marshal Petain formed a new government. On June 17, Petain spoke on the radio and asked the French to cease the fighting. On June 21, 1940, in the forest of Campiegne, about 70 kilometers from Paris, in the same car in which 22 years ago the Germans had surrendered to the French, under the chords of "Deutschland Uber Alles" and the Nazi salute made by Hitler, France surrendered to Germany. All the industrial potential of France, the factories of automotive, aviation and chemical products, began to work for the war needs of Germany. The same happened in all the other countries occupied by the Nazis.
Half of France was going to be an occupied area, 65% of the population lived there, 94% of steel was produced, 79% of coal, 75% of wheat and 65% of livestock; the other half, from the city of Vichy, was to be governed by Petain. Because of its political character, the Vichy government was the dictatorship of the French bourgeoisie sector, allied to the Nazi regime of Germany, which is why, after the war, the IV Republic nationalized the factories of most of these social sectors.
But not all the French people were composed of traitors, their great majority aligned with the forces of the "Free France", headed by General Charles De Gaulle, or with the French Communist Party. Both movements, from the underground, fought side by side and played an important role in the fight against fascism. In Great Britain was Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill, who understood that the battle against Nazism was to the death, so he supported all anti-fascist movement.
On September 27, 1940, the Tripartite Pact was signed, according to which the world was divided into spheres of influence: Germany and Italy would dominate Europe and Japan, East Asia. On March 25, 1941, Yugoslavia joined the Tripartite Pact. The people of this country took to the streets to express their discontent, and a group of young officers gave a coup d'etat, overthrew the allied government of the Nazis and appointed a new one, led by General Simovich, Chief of the Air Force. On April 6, 1941, Hitler declared war on Yugoslavia and Greece. The Balkan campaign lasted 18 days, between April 6 and April 24, 1941. Practically, Hitler owned Europe. Now he could launch against the USSR.
The Great Patriotic War
On December 18, 1940, Hitler ordered the German high command to develop the Barbarrosa Plan. This plan envisaged in three or four months occupy Russia to the Urals and had the same characteristics that had given Hitler so good results in the rest of Europe. At the end of April 1941, the political and military leadership of Nazi Germany established the definitive date for the attack on the USSR: on Sunday, June 22 of that year, at four o'clock in the morning. The German high command planned for later the capture, through the Caucasus, of Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Egypt and India, where the German troops would meet with the Japanese. They also expected to be joined by Spain, Portugal and Turkey. They left for later the capture of Canada and the USA, with which they would achieve the total domination of the world.
On June 22, 1941, an army never seen for its magnitude, experience and power, launched the attack on a front more than 3,500 kilometers long, from the Arctic Sea, in the north, to the Black Sea, in the south. There were a total of 190 divisions, five and a half million soldiers, 4,000 tanks, 4,980 aircraft and 192 naval naval vessels. The expectations of the Barbarossa plan were not met because, unlike the rest of Europe, the Wehrmacht found in Russia an unexpected resistance, which made them desperate since the very beginning. General Galdera, Chief of Staff of the ground troops of Germany, wrote: "The Russians always fight to the last person." It is that from the first day of war, the Soviet population united under the slogan: "Everything for the front, all for victory! "In order to defend their homeland, the workers worked tirelessly, the poets wrote motivating poems, the composers created inspired music, the artists performed on all fronts, the peasants obtained the best fruits of the earth, the engineers invented novel combat instruments and the soldiers gave their lives for the sake of freedom. Nobody remained indifferent.
On July 3, 1941, Stalin addressed the Soviet people: "Comrades, citizens, brothers and sisters, members of our armed forces! I am addressing you, my friends! ... Our troops fight heroically, despite the great difficulties, against an enemy armed with tanks and planes ... Together with the Red Army, the whole town rises in defense of his beloved homeland ... This war will not be any war between two enemy armies. This war will be the struggle of the entire Soviet people against the German-Fascist troops. The purpose of the people's war will be not only to destroy the threat that weighs on the Soviet Union but also to help all those peoples of Europe who are under the German yoke. In this war the Soviet people will have their best allies in the nations of Europe and America, including the German people, enslaved by their leaders ... Comrades, our forces are powerful. The insolent enemy will soon realize this ... All the strength of our people will be used to crush the enemy. Ahead! Towards Victory! "
Thereafter, a conflagration known as the Great Patriotic War began. The successes of the Hitler troops in the first operations of this war were due to the advantages that Nazi Germany had over the Soviet Union: She owned almost all of Europe, about 6,500 European industrial centers worked for the Wehrmacht and in their factories they worked 3 ' 100,000 foreign specialist workers; Germany's economy, which was primarily aimed at war production, possessed two and a half times more resources than the Soviet Union. It took the colossal effort of the Soviet people to reverse the situation and achieve victory.
The first failure of the Barbarrosa Plan occurred when the Wehrmacht could not march on November 7, 1941 through the Red Square in Moscow, as planned, but the Soviet Army did, and then march directly to the Moscow front. On this Battle, General Douglas MacArthur writes: "In my life I have participated in several wars, I have observed others and I have studied in detail the campaigns of the most important military leaders of the past. But nowhere had he seen a resistance that was followed by a counter-offensive that made the adversary go back to his own territory. The breadth and brilliance of this effort make it the most important military achievement in history. "
Leningrad Beyond heroism
If Hitler had counted on the courage, combat spirit, organization, patriotism, discipline, productivity and other incomparable characteristics of the Russians, without a doubt he would have won the Second World War. At a good hour, these qualities are not sold in the pharmacies and, although the Germans also own them, the result of the contest speaks meritoriously in favor of the Russian people. It is worth remembering this detail now that the Russophobia denigrates it.
The Venice of the North, as St. Petersburg is also known, was founded in 1703 by Peter I, the Great. It has been the birthplace of many thinkers and poets: Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Blok and others. It is also one of the most beautiful cities on the planet: The Winter Palace, the Hermitage, St. Isaac's Cathedral, the Palace of Peter are beautiful monuments of unparalleled beauty. But when his name is mentioned, it must be remembered that his children performed the greatest act of resistance in history. No one can tell exactly what happened during the Second World War in that city, a symbol of the heroism of the Soviet people. May the sacrifice of their children enlighten future fighters for freedom, that the more than half a million victims who lie in the Piskariovskoye cemetery achieve eternal peace when they see that Nazi-fascism does not exist in this world anymore.
The conquest of Leningrad, that was the name of St. Petersburg, was an important part of the Barbarossa Plan. The group of armies from the north and the German troops from Norway, to which the Finnish Army would be added, must be sufficient to destroy the Soviet forces they faced. The German high command, for which the Leningrad takeover had both political and strategic importance, halted its advance on this city on September 8, 1941, ordered its troops to entrench itself and prepared to break the resistance of the Russian people through a prolonged siege, with the help of the continuous bombardment of aviation into the city and through artillery fire; they supposed that hunger would break them.
The city suffered a blockade of 872 days, as a result of which more than a million Leningrads died, the vast majority of hunger and cold, but Leningrad did not surrender and Hitler's dreams of occupying the city did not come true, because his The inhabitants defended it by sacrificing themselves beyond imagining. During the blockade, the Russian people repeated as refrain: "If Leningrad resists, we will also resist." In full blockade, on August 9, 1942, the Leningrad Symphony Orchestra played the Seventh Symphony or Symphony to Leningrad, composed by Dmitri Shostakovich . The famous composer dedicated this creation to "our struggle against fascism, the approaching victory and my native Leningrad." The work, which was a hymn of hope in victory, was broadcast by radio to the entire world. The loudspeakers were heading towards the Germans, because the city wanted the invaders to listen to it.
The people of Leningrad were kept upright by the unwavering faith in victory. The working conditions were the hardest, the cold was unbearable and there was no need to eat, there was no light or heating or transportation, and yet nobody complained, even at the time of death. People died in silence.
Despite the intense bombing of German aircraft, through the frozen Lake Ládoga, called "Camino de la Vida", the shipment of food, medicine, weapons and other supplies was not interrupted. The drivers drove whole days without resting. Those who directed the traffic had to stand on the snow, enduring the wind and the cold of up to -30 ° C, sleeping very few hours a day.
An oil pipeline was laid on the bottom of the lake and Leningrad revived. The factories returned to produce and the population had again light and heating. On January 18, 1943, the Red Army partially broke the blockade through an operation called Iskrá, spark in Spanish, which connected Leningrad with the rest of Russia. About a year later, on January 27, 1944, the Soviet Army completely liberated the city. Therefore, its inhabitants say proudly: "Troy fell, Rome fell, Leningrad did not fall."
Nothing is more pathetic than the diary of Tania Sávicheva, a Russian girl who synthesizes in a few lines the suffering of millions of citizens of Leningrad. She writes: "Zhenia died on December 28, 1941, at 12:30. The grandmother died on January 25, 1942, at 3:00 in the afternoon. Leka died on March 17, 1942, at 5:00 in the morning. Uncle Vasia died on April 13, 1942, 2 hours after midnight. Uncle Lesha, on May 10, 1942 at 4:00 in the afternoon. My mother died on May 13, 1942 at 7:30 in the morning. The Savichevs died. They all died. Only Tania remains. "
Stalingrad and Kursk, battles that defined the war
The greatest German defeat occurred in the Battle of Stalingrad, the bloodiest and most bitter in history, with more than three million soldiers killed on both sides. It lasted from August 1942 until February 2, 1943, and culminated with the incredible victory of the Soviet Army, something that nobody in the world expected, on the powerful Sixth German Army, which was fighting to conquer Stalingrad, after fighting without truce on each floor of each house.
One of the most glorious episodes is the House of Pávlov - an apartment building defended by a small garrison - which happened between September 23 and November 25, 1942, when another Soviet command replaced it. The German Sixth Army, which in less time had seized half of Europe, was unable to appropriate this house, defended by a dozen brave soldiers. The men of Yákov Pávlov, a non-commissioned officer who commanded the defense of this fort, eliminated more soldiers from the enemy than the German soldiers who died during the liberation of Paris.
On the battle of Stalingrad, the German General, Dorr, writes: "The conquered territory was measured in meters, there had to be fierce actions to take a house or a workshop ... We were face to face with the Russians, which prevented us from using aviation . The Russians were better than us in the house-to-house fight, their defenses were very strong. "General Chuikov, defender of Stalingrad, was the one who devised this form of struggle, in which the space of separation of his troops from the Germans never exceeded the radius of action of a grenade launcher. When destroying the city, the Nazis prevented that the action of their tanks was effective, the same ruins acted like antitank defenses.
Thanks to the combative morality of the defenders of Stalingrad, the Germans managed to advance barely half a kilometer in the twelve-day offensive of October 1942, they had lost the initiative and could not attack successfully again. On November 11, the Germans attacked in Stalingrad for the last time, trying to reach the Volga River on a five-kilometer front; the offensive failed because the Russians defended every meter of land.
On November 19, the Soviet Army began a counter-offensive that had been elaborated in the greatest secrecy; Four days later, the Germans were surrounded by a ring between 40 and 60 kilometers wide. The ultimatum sent by General Rokosovsky to Marshal Von Paulus was rejected. On February 2, 1943, after fierce fighting, all German resistance in Stalingrad ceased.
The Soviet Army captured a field marshal, 24 generals, 25,000 officers and 91,000 soldiers. In the battle of Stalingrad, the Wehrmacht lost more than a million men, 25% of all the forces that operated at the time on the eastern front, more than 3,000 tanks and almost 4,500 aircraft. It was the worst defeat suffered by the German Army during its entire history. For Germany, the defeat was so hard that it decreed three days of mourning. In Memoirs of a Soldier, General Heinz Guderian writes: "After the catastrophe of Stalingrad, at the end of January 1943, the situation became quite threatening, even without the intervention of the Western powers."
The victory of Stalingrad marked the beginning of the total collapse of Nazi Germany and laid the foundations for the massive expulsion of the invaders from the Soviet territory. Almost all the military equipment that was used was manufactured in the factories that the Soviet technicians moved from the central area of Russia to the other side of the Urals, with the Germans on their heels.
After the battle of Stalingrad it was known that in 1943 the Second Front would not open either, which meant that Germany could concentrate on the Eastern Front the most select of its troops to fight against the USSR. In a letter to Roosevelt, dated June 10, 1943, Stalin writes: "You and Churchill have decided to postpone the invasion of Western Europe for the spring of 1944. Once again we will have to fight almost alone." And in a letter to Churchill he writes: "Our government could never imagine that the United States and Great Britain would review the decision to invade Western Europe ... We were not consulted ... You tell me that you fully understand my disappointment. It is my duty to clarify that it is not a simple disillusionment of the Soviet government but to maintain trust among the allies. Do not forget that it is about saving the lives of millions of people living in the occupied regions of Western Europe and Russia, as well as reducing the huge casualties of the Soviet Army. "
Under these conditions, in the summer of 1943, the Battle of Kursk, or Plan Ciudadela, in which, according to Hitler, the Germans "had to recover in the summer what they had lost in the winter." Guderian writes in Memoirs of a Soldier: "We suffered a devastating defeat in Kursk. The armored troops, which had been replenished with great effort, as a result of the great losses of men and war materials were long out of service ... As a result of the failure of the Citadel plan, the Eastern Front absorbed all the forces that were located in France. "From that then on, Nazi Germany was left without a military initiative. In this battle the myth was buried that it was the Russian winter that helped the Red Army; It was also the largest tank battle in history, involving 6,900 tanks and 4,000 aircraft from both sides.
In the battle of Stalingrad and Kursk the best units of the German army were exterminated, those that fought under the slogan of winning or dying. They were the decisive factor so that the opening of the Second Front, the disembarkation in Normandy, was not postponed any more. Both victories proved to the Allies that if they did not disembark in Europe, the USSR alone was capable of defeating Germany.
The Second Front, Normandy
On June 6, 1944, on D-Day, the lengthy opening of the Second Front began on the French beach of Normandy, which somewhat eased the pressure that the German troops had exerted on the USSR in the last three years. This operation worsened the situation of the Third Reich, which thus lost its bases of air and naval operations, which foreshadowed its coming collapse. The opening of the Second Front was commanded by General Dwight D. Eisenhower, who commanded an expeditionary force from the British Isles, consisting of 1,213 warships and 4,126 transport. The expeditionary force was composed entirely of 2,876,436 men, of whom 1,533,000 were Americans. The operation was called Overlord and the aquatic part, Neptune.
Germany had exhausted almost all its reserves and most of its forces were engaged on the eastern front. On the other hand, the German Army was no longer that of the previous years, its best men had fallen dead or been taken prisoner in the battles of Moscow, Leningrad, Stalingrad, Kursk, Kiev, etc. According to Louis Snyder, North American historian of the City College of New York: "The great Wehrmacht was no longer the superb war machine but a heterogeneous army formed by Hungarians, Poles, Russians, French and even blacks and Indians. The divisions that defended the 'Atlantic Wall' were largely made up of very old men, very young soldiers and foreigners forced to fight for the Reich. " According to Gerd Von Rudshtedt, General Commander of the German forces in the West: "The Atlantic wall was an illusion, invented to confuse both the German people and the enemy. It always bothered me when I read legends about the unbreakable defense. It was ridiculous to call this barrier. Hitler never visited her and did not see what she represented in reality. "
General Eisenhower brilliantly used all the factors in his favor and left no detail at random. He disembarked in Normandy, the place that the Germans least expected. The logical thing would have been that, as expected by the enemy, he did it for the Pas de Calais, which is the shortest distance between England and continental Europe. The landing was made on a day that was not good for it, so a good number of German generals, confident in bad weather, were absent, including Rommel. He used aviation optimally, a force in which his superiority was indisputable. There were waves of a thousand planes bombing the fortifications, railway networks and warehouses of all kinds.
They disembarked 13,000 North American parachutists and 5,300 British, that were in charge to isolate certain strategic zones of the rest of France. With the first rays of the morning sun, six battleships began the naval bombardment, the largest between water and land recorded by history. Then the frogs men destroyed the marine obstacles and the minesweepers cleaned the coast of mines. Then an impressive fleet, made up of 5,339 ships, copied the waters of the English Channel in Normandy. The area was so well protected that the German submarines could only sink a Norwegian destroyer.
Countless landing craft departed from these ships, and when they opened their floodgates they deposited warlike soldiers, thousands of whom died as a result of heavy shrapnel fire that awaited them, but most managed to seize long pieces of beach. The fight took on a frenetic pace, close to savagery. After the soldiers had to overcome the huge cliffs that separate the mainland from the beach, the same mines, barbed wire and enemy forts. The Germans did not surrender but fought with great bravery. The English, as always, showed signs of exceptional courage and courage.
For the first week, the allied troops had seized 130 km of coastline, entered 30 km on the mainland and landed 16 divisions. It was a success not only military but also political and a real moral blow to the Nazi army. As of the first week, the entire initiative on this front was left to the allied forces.
By the second week, about 600,000 men and 100,000 vehicles had landed. On August 7, Germany made a counterattack with the intention of throwing the allies back to the sea, but in the course of five days they only managed to penetrate a few kilometers on the allied lines; the operation ended in a resounding failure. On August 17, General Patton took Rennes, capital of French Brittany, and seized Saint Malo, south of Normandy. By August 21, the battle was over. The Germans retreated in disorder towards Paris.
On August 19 there was the uprising in Paris. Allied troops quickly made their way to the French capital, which they entered when the French resistance forces had liberated it. General Leclerc commanded the French troops who first entered Paris and on August 20, from Montparnasse, announced the surrender of 10,000 Germans in charge of the Paris garrison. The next day, General de Gaulle paraded through the boulevards of the City of Light.
The battle for France cost the Wehrmacht 500,000 casualties. The Germans went battered to take shelter behind the Siegfried line. Thus ended this important stage of the war. Important Yes, but in no way definitive or decisive. It is not a question of subtracting merits from this operation, but everything must have its corresponding place in the story. Henry L. Stimson, then Minister of War of the United States, writes in his 1948 memoirs: "Not opening the Western front in time in France meant transferring the full weight of the war to Russia."
The struggle, although tough, was less harsh than on the eastern front, where, in addition to having more select and numerous troops, the Germans fought with greater determination and courage. The USSR fulfilled the promise made to the Allies in Tehran, that after the landing in Normandy, in order to lessen the pressure on the allies would occur in France, they would begin a general offensive on the Soviet-German front.
Operation Bagratión
The Operation Bagratión, according to the Soviet high command, was made with the purpose of "Cleaning up of Nazi occupiers all our land and restoring the state borders of the Soviet Union in all its extension, from the Black Sea to the Barents Sea, to persecute the German wounded beast to its own burrow ... Free our Polish, Czechoslovakian and other brothers from oppression. "Only five people of the Soviet high command knew all the plans related to this operation. The main blow was given through swamps, an impassable area where the Germans did not expect any military operation, so their defenses were weaker.
The USSR attacked Viborg through the Karelian Isthmus, as a consequence in Finland fell the government of Ryti, an ally of Germany. The parliament granted powers to Marshal Mannerheim, who forced the German army to withdraw from Finland in the direction of Norway. Then Maretskov Maretskov's troops broke the German lines in Murmansk and liberated the north of the Norwegian territory, occupied by Germany. The Soviet Army unleashed the following blow on the Belarusian front, which the Germans called the Eastern Barrier and which, according to them, was more powerful than the "Atlantic Wall" because its walled cities could not be abandoned without the express authorization of the Fuhrer.
In Belarus, many anti-fascist Germans fought alongside the Soviet troops. Fritz Schmenkel, who was shot by the Nazis in Minsk, is a hero of the Soviet Union for fighting the Nazis alongside the Belarussian guerrillas. As reported by the US press: "The Soviet troops helped as if they themselves had assaulted the German fortifications on the French coast, as Russia began a major offensive that forced the Germans to keep millions of men on the eastern front otherwise it would have been easy to resist the Americans in France. "This offensive, Operation Bagratión, produced such defeats to the Wehrmacht that the German high command called them" Worse than Stalingrad. "
It is not all. When the Germans unleashed the counter-offensive called "North Wind", in the Ardennes, where the Wehrmacht broke the Allied defense in a sector of 80 km and advanced 100 km in 10 days, which threatened the allied troops with a second and more disastrous Dunkirk, Eisenhower writes to the US Defense Minister: "The tension of this situation could be greatly diminished if the Russians began a great offensive." So Churchill sends the following telegram to Stalin, in which, then After explaining the situation at the front, he asks: "General Eisenhower is eager to know what plans you have. Could you count on a great Russian offensive on the Vistula or elsewhere during the month of January?
Stalin replies to Churchill: "Without taking into account the difficulties of bad weather, in view of the situation in which our allies on the Western Front are, the Supreme Command of the Soviet Army has decided to unleash a large-scale offensive against the Germans along the entire Central Front, without taking into account the weather conditions. "
To which Churchill replies: "I am very grateful to you for your exciting letter ... I hope you will be accompanied by good luck in your noble task. His news greatly comforted General Eisenhower since the Germans must divide their forces. "
The victory
After liberating more than twenty European countries from the Nazi-fascist yoke, Soviet troops entered Berlin and on May 1, 1945 raised their country's flag in the Reichstag. On May 9, the last German troops of the Waffen SS ceased fighting and surrendered in Prague to General Konev. The war ended and humanity, thanks to the heroic sacrifice of all free men, was saved from living under the Third Reich, the political system that Hitler had planned for a thousand years.
After 1,418 days of fierce fighting, a race ended in which nearly 60 million human beings died, of which 27 were Soviet. The British correspondent of the BBC, Alexander Werth, writes: "The Russians carried the heaviest burden in the war against Nazi Germany, precisely because of this millions of Americans and English were alive." Edward Stettinus, at that time Secretary of US State, writes that the American people should remember that in 1942 was on the verge of catastrophe, if the Soviet Union had not held its front, the Germans would have been in a position to conquer Great Britain; they would have been in a position to seize Africa and create a parade ground in Latin America.
May 9 is a sacred date for Russia, because to achieve victory in the Soviet Union, 27 million of its children were immolated, 60 million were mutilated, 32,000 industrial enterprises were destroyed, 65,000 kilometers of railways, 1,710 cities, 70,000 villages , 6 million buildings, 40,000 hospitals, 84,000 schools, 98,000 agricultural cooperatives, 1,876 state haciendas. The Nazis moved to Germany 7 million horses, 17 million head of cattle, 20 million pigs, 27 million sheep and goats, 110 million poultry. The USSR had a loss of more than 30% of its wealth, worth about 3 billion dollars (a 3 followed by twelve zeros). Thanks to this sacrifice, humanity was freed from the eternal night of imperial domination with which Hitler dreamed.
Sometimes, US aid to the USSR is exaggerated. The certain thing is that the deliveries of the allies, by means of the Law of Loans and Leases, equaled 4% of the production of the Soviet Union. Of the total of 46,700 million dollars that the United States supplied to its allies, the USSR received 10,800 million dollars, less than a quarter of that total.
It is good to remember the past because then, as now, evil grew without anyone being able to stop it; however, the heroic struggle not only of the Soviet people but of all free men saved the world from Nazi barbarism. Perhaps, the most important lesson for present and future generations is that wars must be fought before they erupt .
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