|
ATTENTION WORLD WAR
TWO VETERANS
Yevgeny Nikanorov, a World War Two veteranand
a Muscovite addresses his brothers in arms in the United States of America.
Please answer him if you are alive!
In September 1944, when our 155 Guards attack
air regiments had its disposition on the aerodrome Padev in the proximity
of Sandomir bridge-head, on the right shore of Vistula river, there happened
such an event. The German fighters approaching our aerodrome from the west
were chasing an American bomber B-17 "Liberator"; they were shooting
at the bomber with all their airborne guns and machine guns. Then our fighters
forced the Germans to leave in western direction, and in their turn began
shooting at the bomber. The bomber's crewmen began leaving the damaged
machine jumping with parachutes. In total there appeared ten white parachutes
and a red one in the sky. As we learned later, the red parachute opened
over flight ration in a box having dimensions of approximately one cubic
meter. Our aerodrome was situated in the third defense line of the First
Ukrainian front. Near me there was standing an infantryman, he was looking
at Il-2. The soldier happened for the first time to see so close such an
airplane. Germans called these attack planes "Black death". But
when in the sky over our heads appeared parachuters, - and they were rather
quickly lowering, because altitude of the bomber's flight was rather small,
infantrymen opened on them a storm of fire. Later we found out, that four
of ten crewmembers were wounded. Their wounds were not severe. One of American
pilots was falling directly on us. Having raised his hands up, the pilot
shouted: "America! America!" And the soldier shouted: "Commandos!
Commandos!" When the pilot was about thirty meters from us, I was
already sure, that it was really an American pilot, not a German commando.
I pushed the soldier's submachine gun aside and shouted at him to stop
shooting. "They are Americans, allies! Hear, the pilot cries: "America!
America!" All this has happened very fast. The pilot has landed on
legs in two meters from us. He was tall, broad-shouldered, sun-burnt, in
green flying suit, in brown boots, without headgear. He looked, so to say,
very smart. He smiled and repeated: "America! America!"I shouted
at him that we had understood he was an allied soldier and showed him to
lower his hands and take off the parachute. I still tried using sign language
and distorting Russian words to speak with him about something, but here
arrived the regiment commander assistant Hero of the Soviet Union major
M.Odintsov. and took away the American pilot to the regiment's headquarters.
(Nowadays being twice Hero of the Soviet Union, general-colonel Odintsov
lives in Moscow). As for the B-17, it continue its flight for some time,
as if somebody were still navigating it, and then began dropping to the
left wing, snapped into spin, hit the ground and exploded… Later, after
demobilization, I heard another version of this story. Ostensibly, the
German commandos were flying three American B-17. One was brought down
over Vistula in the region of Sandomir. The second was brought down in
the region of the city of Melets. And the third one arrived to us, to the
aerodrome Padev. From the point of view of common sense this version is
senseless, but it did exist…
Where are you now, soldiers of the Second World
War, participants in that event? May be you shall recollect this short
instant - from those terrible years of war? There were ten American pilots.
May be some of them are still alive, or may be all of them are alive. Let's
hope so! May be some of them remember that day and will respond? My address:
117292, Moscow, Iv.Babushkina Street, 3, apt. 252, ph. 124-21-52 Nikanorov
Eugeny Antonovich.
A RECOLLECTION OF VICTORY
DAY
And now, the story about Mikhail Pletushkov who
of May 9th, 1945, was only 11 years old, and how he remembers that great
day. He was a cadet at a military school named after Alexander Suvorov,
an outstanding Russian military commander. Such military schools were opened
in the war years for youngsters whose fathers - soldiers and officers -
were killed when fighting the enemy. And, of course, Victory Day will remain
in their memory as long as they live. "Fifty-five years is a long
period of time, but man's memory keeps in store many important events,
and I, too, remember very well that day - May 9th, 1945.
I was in my second year at a military school.
The teachers, instructors, almost the entire staff once fought at the frontlines.
Many had awards for combat service. And we, the young cadets, had the highest
respect for them. What is more, among us were boys who knew what war is
from their own experience. They were known as "sons of the regiment".
During military action it had so happened that the boys found themselves
at the frontlines, and they stayed with the armymen helping them as much
as they could. Sometimes they took part in the fighting together with the
adults and received well deserved orders for bravery. And, of course, the
rest of the cadets envied them very much when on special occasions they
pinned orders and medals to their tunics.
All of us followed keenly everything that went
on at the frontlines. There was a huge map in the gymnasium, and we marked
the advance of our troops westwards with little red flags. Every time some
population center was freed, we moved the little flag so that the Russian-German
frontline would be even an inch further away. But sometimes this went on
so slow, and all the time we kept thinking anxiously about our fathers,
brothers and friends fighting there. And, of course, we were all looking
forward to victory with tremendous impatience. And at last came the much
awaited news. This happened at dawn of May 9th, 1945. We learned it from
the officer on duty and at once ran to the other bedrooms to tell everything
to those who were still sleeping. And at once all were on their feet, shouting
" Hurrah!", throwing pillows to the ceiling, jumping on the beds
and shouting in jubilation all sorts of absurdity, hugging the teachers
crying from joy. And I also remember one boy, "son of a regiment",
crying loud, with his face buried in a pillow.
A little later we, the school cadets, took part
in the Victory Parade. I'll never forget that day. The boys in military
uniform felt grown up and very proud. They were a tiny part of the great
army which won the Victory over Nazi Germany."
WRITER VALENTIN BEREZHKOV:
MAN OF UNIQUE DESTINY
Valentin Berezhkov is a well-known diplomat,
historian, writer - in short a man of unique destiny. Our correspondent
Olga Krasivskaya elaborates.
I have met with Valentin Berezhkov more than
once, and the energy and enthusiasm he lived and worked with always amazed
me. It was just his luck, he explained jokingly. He became a diplomat unexpectedly,
because of his command of foreign languages. He worked at the Soviet embassy
in Berlin, where the start of the Great Patriotic War overtook him. He
was the only one of Stalin's three interpreters who miraculously stayed
alive in his lifetime. He has written many books about the war, about events
he happened to witness: "The Diplomatic Mission in Berlin", "The
Birth of a Coalition", "Tehran-1943" and others. He was
lucky to meet, thanks to his profession, with people who made the 20th-century
history. He saw Churchill, Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower... Here's how
Valentin Berezhkov describes the first meeting between the head of the
Soviet government and Britain's prime minister in the summer of 1942. "Churchill
was obviously excited, judging by his fussiness. He kept saying that his
joy at the arrival in heroic Moscow was overwhelming." Stalin, on
the contrary, behaved with great restraint. Churchill had to play the unenviable
role of a politician, who was compelled to make excuses and manoeuvre because
of the failure to keep the solemn promise to open a second front given
earlier. Nonetheless, Churchill served England as every man should serve
his country - cleverly, with a passionate regard for national history and
with cold calculation at the same time. Britons will always view him as
the person who in the severe autumn of 1940 embodied the noble national
conviction that they would never become slaves. Such a politician cannot
be forgotten also because on June 22, 1941, he was the only leader of a
world power who proclaimed union with this country at the hour of its most
horrible national trial.
Meetings with Nazi leaders, such as Hitler, were
of a different, chilling, nature. He met with Hitler in the autumn of 1940.
"Earlier I had seen Hitler at a distance," Valentin Berezhkov
recalls. "However, at the talks between Molotov and Hitler I saw him
at a close range. The talks were held prior to the arrival of a Soviet
governmental delegation in Berlin. He made an oppressive impression on
me; his palm was cold and moist, like a frog." He was repulsive, with
a long nose; his face was covered with blackheads; he had unpleasantly
watery eyes and an ugly forelock. To stay side by side with him was unpleasant.
By nature he was an artist, and he impressed the German people in a different
way. Many women adored him, they reached out their arms trying to touch
his coat, they worshipped him. He truly hypnotized the public. He behaved
as if he were a film star and pretended that he was lonely despite his
entourage. He was a poseur...
In the meantime, a horrible ordeal expected Valentin
Berezhkov. Beria had already told Stalin that Berezhkov's parents lived
in a locality invaded by the Nazis. In those times it was viewed as an
unpardonable crime. By then Berezhkov was already not only an adviser to
Foreign Minister Molotov, but also Stalin's interpreter. He recalls: "I
was faced with arrest and torture. I would have certainly admitted that
I was a Polish spy to stop the torture. It would have been a sensational
case - a Polish spy in Stalin's study, trying to engineer an attempt on
Stalin's life! I knew that every innocent person arrested by Beria admitted
that he was a spy. He was a horrible man, and that was a horrible time,
but Molotov saved me. He arranged a transfer for me. I joined the editorial
office of a magazine. He told me to say to no one where I had worked, with
whom I had met. I wrote my articles under a pen-name until 1954.
Valentin Berezhkov was known abroad more than
in his own country. And still fate was kind to him: he saw the famous procession
of German prisoners of war. And what amazed him was the dignity the Soviet
people who had gone through so many tribulations watched the passing column
with. No one shouted, no one cursed them. People watched them with sorrow
and reproach. The procession went on for hours. There were thousands upon
thousands of Germans. They had been ordered to raze the Soviet capital
to the ground, but that task proved to be unaccomplishable. They could
reach Moscow only as prisoners of war. There would be no lightning victories
for them. This was obvious to all who watched the procession of 57,000
prisoners of war in Moscow on July 17, 1944. In the meantime, Moscow basked
in the sun; it was full of people and confident of its final victory over
the enemy.
KONSTANTIN ROKOSSOVSKY
by Lyubov Tsarevskaya
On June 24, 1945, the Red Square in Moscow was jam-packed with troops
preparing to march down the country's main venue in celebration of the
great Allied Victory over Nazism.
The moment the giant clock high up the Kremlin's Spasskaya Tower chimed
ten, Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky, who commanded the Victory Parade,
spurred his jet-black horse and galloped on to report to Marshal Georgy
Zhukov whose snow-white stallion had just passed through the Spasskiye
Gate. Rokossovsky considered the one-in-a-lifetime chance to command a
Victory Parade a sign of profound appreciation of his long service to his
country. This program is about the life and work of one of the greatest
military commanders Russia ever had…
Konstantin Rokossovsky was born on December 8, 1896. His father was
a Polish railroadman and his mother was Russian. When Konstantin was still
a teenager, his father died in a railway accident, leaving the family high
and dry. Mother died shortly after and Konstantin had to leave school and
look for a job. After trying his hand doing all kinds of manual jobs, he
eventually landed one with a tombstone company. When World War One erupted
in 1914, Rokossovsky volunteered to the frontlines started out as an enlisted
man and them moving up through the ranks to become a petty officer. He
fought well, was wounded twice and awarded the St.George Orders for valor
of 4th, 3rd and 2nd class.
His successful military career was briefly cut short by the 1917 revolution,
but the Bolsheviks who took power shortly after, needed professional military
men and thousands of low rank officers formerly serving in the Imperial
army were now joining the Red Army. It was there that Konstantin Rokossovsky's
military shone the brightest. Still a young man, he already had a whole
division under his hand and was fast moving up through the ranks. During
Stalin's purge of the military in the mid-1930s, Rokossovsky's very successful
career was cut short again. He spent two and a half years in the GULAG
on a trumped-up charge, and all that time he kept insisting he was innocent.
Just like so many other jailed Red Army commanders, he was released on
orders from the then Soviet leader Josef Stalin in March 1940 when the
Second World War was already raging in Europe. But momentum had already
been lost. Who knows, maybe Hitler's invasion of June 22, 1941, would have
been little less surprising if Konstantin Rokossovsky had then been working
at the General Military Staff…
His strategic talent didn't take long showing itself, though. Encircled
and heavily outnumbered by the advancing Nazis, he managed to break through,
crushed the enemy and, unaware of the overall situation at the front, sent
a message to his superiors asking for a permission to move on and take
Warsaw. He was ordered to fall back, though, and, even though they never
gave awards for retreats, Rokossovsky was decorated for getting his army
corps out with minimum losses. The Nazi Generals were quick to appreciate
his strategic talent and feared him. Here is just one example of that German
respect for the much-talented Soviet commander.
In 1941 the Red Army was trying unsuccessfully to claw back a small
town in Belorussia. Rokossovsky was ordered to move in and help. He sent
out an open radio message saying he was coming clearly wishing it to be
intercepted by the Germans. And intercept they did abandoning the town
without a fight!
Rokossovsky's role in routing the Nazis in the great Battle of Stalingrad
is equally hard to exaggerate. In a textbook operation, he encircled the
more than 300,000-strong German army commanded by Field Marshal Friedrich
von Paulus. It was to Rokossovsky that the vanquished Nazi commander surrendered
his gun. The victory in Stalingrad made him famous all over the world.
Other major battles ensued, including the Battle of the Kursk Bulge, but
the operation to liberate Belorussia in 1944 became the most brilliant
battle he ever fought.
In Moscow Josef Stalin and his top commanders were discussing the details
of the Belorussian operation. Rokossovsky suggested the Red Army stage
a two-pronged attack. "Why scatter our forces? What about striking
hard in one place instead?" Stalin said, and, apparently decided,
concluded in a no-nonsense voice: "That's exactly what we are going
to do." Rokossovsky dug his heels. "A two-pronged attack is a
better thing to do… First, we engage the main forces on the right wing
and, secondly, we severely restrict the enemy's freedom of movement. And,
thirdly, even a single successful strike will put the enemy in a serious
predicament…"
Annoyed by Roikossovsky's abstinence, Stalin asked him to leave the
room and think about the original proposal. Rokossovsky walked out, gave
the whole idea another thought and, getting back, kept defending his own
plan. Incensed, Stalin told him to leave and think again. Minutes later,
Rokossovsky walked in and stuck to his guns again. Arguing with Stalin
was no joke and only a handful of daredevils had the guts to stand up to
the all-powerful dictator. Rokossovsky had and Stalin eventually agreed
with him. What happened next proved amply proved Rokossovsky's point.
Hundreds of thousands of crack Nazi troops were encircled and destroyed,
and the Belorussian operation is still studied in military academies around
the world. The operation was codenamed Bagration after the outstanding
Russian commander of the same name who died fighting Napoleon's invasion
in 1812. The operation was also named so because Stalin affectionately
called Rokossovsky "my Bagration." Stalin fully appreciated the
brilliant success of the whole operation promoting Rokossovsky to the rank
of Marshal of the Soviet Union…
Konstantin Rokossovsky belonged to that very rare breed of commanders
who are equally good in retreat and in advance. Profoundly educated and
cultured and a great organizer too, he was loved and respected by all.
He was also very handsome, elegant and proportionally-built. "A beautiful
man who fought beautifully," Marshal Georgy Zhukov once said of him.
Marshal Rokossovsky ended the war in Vismar, Germany, where on May
3, 1945, his troops met with the advance units of the 2nd British Army.
Field Marshal Montgomery bestowed upon him the Order of the Bath which
only added to the impressive collection of decorations awarded him throughout
his long and successful career. Still, Rokossovsky's biggest award was
the one-in-a-lifetime opportunity to command the Victory Parade on the
Red Square on June 24, 1945, presided over by Marshal Georgy Zhukov with
the Commander-in-Chief Josef Stalin looking on from the Lenin Mausoleum.
"Comrade Marshal, the troops of the Red Army and the Moscow garrison
are ready for the Victory Parade!" Rokossovsky's voice reverberated
through the sprawling square. He handed Zhukov the report and the two Marshals
rode, side by side, somber-looking and resplendent in their flashy uniforms,
with their white and black horses trampling the vanquished Nazi banners,
right into Eternity…
A LONDON REMINDER OF
THE BATTLE OF STALINGRAD
by Boris Belitzky
The Mayor of Volgograd - formerly Stalingrad
- has travelled to London to confer the freedom of that city on Great Britain's
Queen-Mother, the "Queen-Mum," as she is fondly referred to by
her people. This - perhaps long overdue - honor is a tribute to the help
she rendered to the people of Stalingrad following the epic battle there.
The then reigning queen established a foundation to help the people of
that war ravaged city, made the initial contribution to it, and, together
with Clementine Churchill, the wife of Winston Churchill, launched a campaign
to collect warm clothing and medicines for Stalingraders.
Stalingraders were indeed in need of such help,
for their city had just been the scene of the epic battle that many historians
all over the world have called the turning point of the war. One of them
is the British historian Antony Beevor, who recently published the best-seller
book "Stalingrad."
In that book I came across this description of
the city. In November 1943, a Douglas transport plane flew low over Stalingrad.
The Soviet diplomats on board were on their way from Moscow to meet their
American and British opposite numbers at Teheran, where one of the landmark
wartime conferences of the allies was held. One of the passengers was the
interpreter Valentin Berezhkov.
"We pressed to the windows in silence,"
he wrote later. "First individual houses scattered in snow came into
view, and then a kind of unbelievable chaos began: lumps of walls, boxes
of half-ruined buildings, piles of rubble, isolated chimneys. Visible against
the snow were the black figures of people and every now and then there
was evidence of new buildings..."
It was at the Teheran Conference that Churchill
presented the Sword of Stalingrad to the Soviet people. The blade bore
the engraved dedication: "To the steelhearted citizens of Stalingrad,
a gift from King George VI as a token of the homage of the British people."
Over now to another Western historian of that
period, William Shirer. In his book "The Rise and Fall of the Third
Reich," he describes how the news of the Nazi defeat at Stalingrad
was broken to the German people:
"The reading of the communique over the
German radio was preceded by the roll of muffled drums and followed by
the playing of the second movement of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. Hitler
proclaimed four days of national mourning. All theatres, cinemas, and variety
halls were closed until it was over."
"Stalingrad," wrote the German historian
Walter Goerlitz, "was certainly the greatest defeat that a German
army had ever undergone. However, it was more than that. In Shirer's words,
"it marked the great turning point in World War Two. The high tide
of Nazi conquest, which has rolled over most of Europe, had now begun to
ebb and it would never flow back again..."
THE FINAL STAGE OF THE
GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR
The spring of 1945 saw the final stage of the cruelest war in the history
of mankind as Soviet troops carried out the Berlin operation.
Until June 1944 the Soviet Union shouldered most of the burden of that
war. Its allies in the anti-Hitler coalition, Britain and the United States,
were not in a hurry to open the second front and even conducted secret
talks with Nazi Germany hoping to prevent Soviet troops from entering Europe
and keep Germany as a counterbalance to the Soviet Union. During these
secret talks held in Switzerland in 1944 and 1945 the German General Carl
Wolf offered Britain and the United States considering a separate peace.
Yet the rapid advance of Soviet troops thwarted these plans.
In December 1944 the British-American troops under the command of General
Eisenhower faced the threat of a defeat in the Ardennes after they retreated
under the pressure of Nazi troops. This made the British Prime Minister
Winston Churchill appeal to the Soviet leader Josef Stalin to launch without
delay an offensive on the Eastern front to divert part of the German troops
from the West.
Despite the unfavorable situation, Stalin ordered a large-scale offensive
all along the Central Front running for 700 kilometers. The Soviet troops
crushed the enemy and in a matter of two weeks covered 500 kilometers liberating
Warsaw and reaching the Oder River. In February they stood at a distance
of a mere 60 kilometers from Berlin. The Soviet troops displayed remarkable
ability for unexpected, quick and courageous maneuvering. Here is just
one episode. One of the units of Soviet troops broke through into the enemy's
territory and using a bypassing maneuver took over a small German town.
The appearance of Soviet soldiers in the streets of the town came as a
shock to the local residents. Taken by surprise and in a hurry to break
through the Russian semi-circle, the German garrison failed to destroy
the communication lines and the telephone exchange continued to operate.
A Russian officer, speaking German, asked an exchange operator to connect
him with the Burgomaster of Berlin. The call was answered by a secretary
who asked who was speaking. The Russian officer said he was Burgomaster
and gave the name of the town. The secretary said that reports were alarming,
that Russians were close.
"How are you doing over there?" asked the secretary.
"Oh, just fine! An hour ago the Russians entered the town."
"Oh, come on. This is a stupid joke. I'll complain to the Burgomaster."
"Go ahead! You may complain to Hitler himself."
"Who's speaking?" - demanded the secretary.
"A Soviet officer. We are coming. We'll continue our talk in person.
See you soon!"
Against all the odds, the Russians never doubted that finally they
would take Berlin. At the very beginning of the war Stalin said to the
British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden with confidence: "Russians
have been to Berlin twice and there will be a third time." Hitler,
who hoped against hope that the Russians would not advance on Berlin, said
once to General Guderian that he did not think that the Russians were as
stupid as the Germans had been when seeing Moscow so close wanted to seize
it at any cost. By the time the Soviet Command had elaborated the Berlin
operation in minute detail!
In the early hours of April 16, 1945, the artillery cannonade broke
the silence of the night, as 40 thousand guns opened a hurricane of fire
on the positions of the Germans. The Soviet troops launched an offensive
on Berlin all along the 250 kilometers of the front stretching from the
Baltic Sea to the Sudetes.
The five thousand troops of the Berlin garrison put up a fierce resistance.
After heavy fighting the Soviet soldiers raised the red banner over the
Reichstag. On April 30 Hitler committed suicide.
On May 8 in a Berlin suburb in the presence of Marshal Zhukov and representatives
of the allies' the German command signed an act of unconditional surrender.
Nearly a million and a half German officers and soldiers surrendered after
the capitulation. The bloodiest war in the history of mankind ended with
the victory of the Soviet people.
REMEMBERING MIDSUMMER
1941
by Boris Belitzky
Thanks largely to Shakespeare, midsummer has
many delightful associations - elves, and goblins, and fairy queens...
A phrase that springs to mind is, "Gorgeous as the sun at midsummer."
But to people in this country, especially of the older generations, midsummer
also has some rather grim associations.
For it was in the early hours of the morning
on June 22nd, 1941, that Hitler flung practically the whole of his immense
war machine against the Soviet Union along its entire Western border, stretching
from the Arctic to the Black Sea. The carnage and ruin this led to, especially
in the initial period of the war, defy description... Captured Nazi documents
disclose that no holds were to be barred in the occupation of Russia -
Hitler insisted that his generals understand this very clearly. War crimes
were officially authorized by the Fuehrer. So were plans to starve the
Russian people by diverting the country's food production to Germany.
History books here in Russia now tell us much
more about the early period of the war than was publicly acknowledged in
Soviet times. They reveal how Stalin's merciless purges on the eve of the
war deprived the armed forces of their most experienced and able commanders.
They expose Stalin's terrible miscalculations - how he feared that a high
combat readiness of the Soviet forces might provoke the Nazi leadership
to move forward the date of its onslaught , how he was influenced by the
Nazi misinformation campaign that operations near the Soviet border were
supposedly deeply camouflaged preparations for an invasion of the British
Isles, and so on...
In short, as the British historian Antony Beevor
puts it, "seldom had an attacker enjoyed such advantages as the Wehrmacht
in June 1941." All the more credit is therefore due to the Soviet
people's staunch resistance to the invader. And this resistance was quick
to arouse the deep admiration of the entire world. As Churchill wrote in
his first wartime message to Stalin, "We are all very glad here that
the Russian armies are making such strong and spirited resistance to the
utterly unprovoked and merciless invasion of the Nazis. There is general
admiration for the bravery and tenacity of the Soviet soldiers and people."
The spirit of comradeship-in-arms between our
two nations at that critical hour was quickly sealed by agreement. Less
than three weeks after the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union the two countries
signed the Agreement for Joint Action in the War Against Germany, the first
step on the way to the formation of the victorious anti-Hitler coalition,
which achieved the complete defeat of Nazi Germany... The coming 55th anniversary
since the Allied victory over Nazi Germany should be another reminder of
the fruits of our close cooperation more than half a century ago...
RUSSIAN HISTORIANS ON
A TRAGIC EPISODE OF THE WAR AT SEA
by Boris Belitzky
Boris Belitzky, himself a World War Two veteran,
recalls a tragic event of the summer of 1942...
That summer the Soviet Union was bearing the
brunt of the struggle against the Nazi war machine. In North Africa, the
British army faced a mere eight Italian and three German divisions. The
Soviet forces faced 217 enemy divisions and 21 brigades, that is, 80 percent
of all the ground forces of the Axis powers.
In these circumstances, Britain and the United
States felt bound to help Russia by sending it military supplies. And that
help from their wartime allies was deeply appreciated by people here -
even though it constituted a very small share of the overall war materials
used by the Soviet forces. I, for one, vividly remember how happy our signals
unit was to receive a powerful Studebaker truck to replace the coughing
little van with which we had had to manage until then...
The bulk of the Allied war materials were delivered
to our country by what came to be known as the "northern convoys,"
which sailed from British ports to the Russian Arctic ports of Murmansk
and Archangel, undoubtedly a hazardous route.
One of the most dramatic and tragic episodes
of this saga is the story of the convoy designated as PQ-17. It consisted
of 35 transport ships escorted by 19 British and American naval vessels,
among them two battleships, an aircraft-carrier, and four cruisers. Besides
this, Soviet and British submarines were dispatched to provide additional
protection for the convoy.
A British historian, David lrving, has written
an account of this episode of the war, a book entitled "The Destruction
of Convoy PQ-17." However, Russian historians have found several inaccuracies
in his story.
The convoy ran into trouble at an early stage.
After a stopover in Iceland, it set to sea on June 27th, 1942, and was
spotted by a German reconnaissance plane on July 1st. The very next day
German aircraft based in Nazi-occupied Norway began attacking the convoy.
However, they accomplished little, thanks to the strong naval force escorting
the convoy. But on July 4th, this covering force suddenly received orders
to abandon the convoy...
These fatal orders, received when the convoy
was in no immediate danger, came from the First Sea Lord Dudley Pound,
who had been opposed to the convoy operations to help Russia from the start.
His signal to the British admirals in command of the escort vessels, Admirals
Tovey and Hamilton, read - "Secret. Most immediate. Cruiser force
withdraw to westward at high speed. Convoy to scatter."
You can imagine the emotions of the British,
American, Canadian, and other seamen aboard the abandoned transports as
they watched their mighty escort ships disappear one by one beyond the
horizon, leaving them all but defenseless against the Nazi dive-bombers
and U-boats. The result was the loss of 153 lives among the seamen. The
ocean also swallowed up over 3 thousand trucks, 430 tanks, and lots of
other hardware so badly needed by the Soviet Army in its battle with the
Nazi war machine.
The casualties would have been much greater,
had it not been for the huge search-and-rescue operation promptly mounted
by the Soviet Northern Fleet. This operation, unfortunately, merits little
attention in Irving's book. So does the exploit of a Soviet bomber, a DB-3F,
which spotted the battleship Tirpitz at the head of a German naval force
heading for the scene, and this caused them to reverse course.
Stalin wrote to Churchill at the time, describing
the Admiralty's orders to the escorting naval vessels to return as "puzzling
and inexplicable." Indeed, were it not for the sound common sense
displayed by the British people at this critical stage of the war, the
feelings of men like the First Sea Lord could have prevailed at the time
and ruined our wartime cooperation, which did so much for our common victory
over Hitler and all he stood for...
VICTORY DAY AND RUSSIAN
EMIGRES
by Boris Novikov
Boris Novikov of our staff, who was born in Kharbin, then a Russian
enclave in China, entitled his story Victory Day and Russian Emigres.
On May 9th Russia will honor its veterans on the 55th anniversary of
Victory Day.
Fifty-five years ago the fiercest war in the history of mankind had
ended with the utter defeat of Nazi Germany, but Russians to this day cannot
forget those dreadful war days.
Every year, for fifty-five years, on May 9th, people in villages and
settlements, towns and cities gathered to attend meetings at War Memorials
- children with their parents, youngsters, intellectuals and workers, veteran
soldiers with medal ribbons decorating their chests. The grateful descendants
laid wreaths and natural flowers on memorial plates, and a minute of silence
commemorated those who had not returned home, who died from wounds. At
a solemn and mournful minute like that I once saw an old grandpa and his
great grandson wiping tears from their faces - "grandpa, grandpa,
don't cry…" These people deserve the deepest respect. They had defended
the Soviet Union, their Motherland, from Nazi invaders and helped save
the world from fascist plague.
Russians are Russians no matter where they happen to live.
Almost two million people of the Russian Empire, those who did not
accept the communist regime that came after the 1917 revolution, had fled
from their Homeland, and without any means of subsistence, dispersed all
over the world. For them it was nothing but an exile, an exile in foreign
lands, where, paradoxical as it may seem, they managed to preserve the
Russian heart and soul. A big part of the two million crossed the border
into Manchuria, China, to make their new habitat in Kharbin. Why Kharbin?
Kharbin was located in the so-called Zone of Alienation of the Chinese
Eastern Railway, which, by the way, belonged to Russia. That's where a
new mode of life, close to that in Russia, began for the Russians in exile.
Other centers in China where Russians had settled down were Peking, Tientsin
and Shanghai.
My parents were among those who had settled down in Kharbin, and that
was where I was born.
The tragedy of the first years of emigration is hard to imagine. Those
were frightful days. But Russians are Russians. The fact that they found
themselves in an absolutely alien to them religious, cultural, moral and
language environment, I think, only stimulated them to form their own enclaves.
In this process the Russian Orthodox Church, and also national societies
of ethnic groups that used to inhabit the former Russian Empire - Tatar,
Jewish, Georgian, Ukrainian, Armenian and others, played an enormous role
to help make the life of not only their compatriots more or less comfortable,
but those of the entire emigre colony. And, as a result, the Russian language,
Orthodox religion and the Russian mode of life have been preserved. They
managed to develop, in conditions of the difficult emigration existence,
and I want to stress this in particular, their literature, arts, and culture,
and, above all, to retain their passionate love for Russia, their Motherland.
The tragic years of repressions of the thirties impacted not only the
Soviet Union, but also the emigre Kharbin. Lured by a scenario worked out
by the USSR Commissariat for Internal Affairs under the notorious People's
Commissar Yezhov, hundreds of Russian emigres, mostly those who worked
at the Chinese Eastern Railway, filled with joy and enthusiasm to again
be able to see their Homeland in 1935 left Kharbin and other places and
went to the USSR…only to get caught in a gigantic slaughter-house.
I was in Kharbin when the Soviet Union was locked in mortal combat
with German Nazis in the west, and in the east the Russian border was tightly
closed from the potential enemy of those times, Japan.
We, Russians living in China, which was then under Japanese rule, felt
keenly the tragedy of our Motherland, struggling against German aggressors.
The Japanese mass media in those days spoke only of the results of large-scale
battles, saying that the Soviet forces were suffering heavy losses - "German
army occupied Ukraine and Byelorussia", "Heavy battles going
on in the Caucasus", "Germans at the approaches to Moscow"…
It's hard to describe the despair the emigres felt in those days. You
had to be there to feel all that. Helpless anger and despair gripped them,
because they could not fight shoulder to shoulder with Soviet soldiers.
Their petitions to the Soviet Consulate General to be sent to the front
remained unanswered. So they organized the collecting of money, clothes,
medicaments, everything the Kharbinites could do to help their Motherland.
I saw them pray in churches with tears in their eyes for the victory of
the Soviet army. They had implicit faith in it, despite the difficult life
in exile, despite the repressions of the thirties. Little by little, having
spread its mighty shoulders, the Soviet Union was sweeping away the invaders
from its lands. The battle of Moscow put the beginning to the Great Victory.
With great emotion Kharbinites followed the war communiques, their hearts
filled with pride for the Russian soldiers. The Stalingrad battle, the
rout of fascist tanks at the approaches to Kursk, the liberation of the
Caucasus, Odessa, Kiev, the whole of Ukraine, Byelorussia, the breaking
through of the Leningrad blockade. Then the military operations began to
spread to neighboring countries. Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria,
Roumania were liberated from the Nazis. Berlin was captured. The Soviet
flag was hoisted over the Reichstag. It was the greatest victory in the
bloodiest war humanity had ever experienced.
It's difficult to describe the rejoicing of the Russian emigres. They
saw the Victory salute over the Red Square in Moscow as clearly as did
the Muscovites. They cried and rejoiced, congratulated and kissed each
other, raised toasts for the victorious Russian soldiers, for their Motherland.
That victory over German Nazism and the capitulation of Japan opened
for me the road to Russia, the road which always spread before my eyes
.
REMEMBERING THE ALLIED
COMRADESHIP-IN-ARMS
by Boris Belitzky
On February 23 Russia celebrated a national holiday - Defenders of
the Fatherland Day. There was a VIP visiting Moscow that day - the British
Foreign Secretary Robin Cook. In welcoming his guest, his Russian opposite
number lgor lvanov said Cook was especially welcome on such an occasion
- Moscow and London had been allies in World War Two. A similar remark
is said to have been made by Acting President Vladimir Putin during his
80 minutes of talks with Cook in the Kremlin. Cook, for his part, is reported
to have said that a long-term strategic partnership with Russia was one
of the priorities of Britain and the European Union.
The Acting President spent the day in Volgograd, which, then known
as Stalingrad, is considered to have been the scene of the most decisive
battle of the Second World War. Small wonder that the battle fascinates
historians to this day and is, for example, the subject of a book published
recently by the British historian Antony Beever. The book, "Stalingrad,"
has been described by reviewers in the British press as a "classic
account of the epic turning point in the Second World War." '
Here is how the author describes the morning after the final victory
over the German forces at Stalingrad...
"The morning of February 2nd began with a thick mist, which was
later dispersed by sun and wind, which whipped up the powdery snow. As
news of the final surrender spread among the 62nd Army, signal flares were
fired into the sky in an impromptu display. Sailors from the Volga flotilla
and soldiers from the left bank crossed the ice with loaves of bread and
tins of food for the civilians who had been trapped for five months in
cellars and holes. Groups and individuals walking about embraced those
they met in wonder. Voices were subdued in the frozen air. The end was
hardly unexpected or even sudden, yet the Russian defenders found it hard
to believe that the Battle of Stalingrad had finally come to an end. Out
of each division sent across the Volga, no more than a few hundred men
survived. In the whole Stalingrad campaign, the Red Army had suffered 1.1
million casualties, of which 485,751 had been fatal..."
The Red Army's victory at Stalingrad was, of course, a tremendous contribution
to the common cause of the allies. President Franklin Roosevelt, in a message
of congratulations to Stalin, wrote: "The commanders and fighters
of your armies at the front, and the men and women who have supported them
in factory and field, have combined not only to cover with glory their
country's arms, but to inspire by their example fresh determination among
all the United Nations." And Winston Churchill wrote that the Red
Army's victories "leave me without power to express to you the admiration
and gratitude which we feel to Russian arms..."
|