From the memoirs of Wehrmacht soldiers and officers:
“My God, what are these Russians planning to do to us? We will all die here!..”

1. Chief of Staff of the 4th Army of the Wehrmacht, General Gunter Blumentritt

“Close communication with nature allows Russians to move freely at night in the fog, through forests and swamps. They are not afraid of the dark, endless forests and cold. They are no stranger to winter, when the temperature drops to minus 45. The Siberian, who can be partially or even fully considered Asian, is even more resilient, even stronger... We already experienced this ourselves during the First World War, when we had to face the Siberian Army Corps "

“For a European, accustomed to small territories, the distances in the East seem endless... The horror is intensified by the melancholic, monotonous nature of the Russian landscape, which has a depressing effect, especially in the gloomy autumn and painfully long winter. The psychological influence of this country on the average German soldier was very strong. He felt insignificant, lost in these endless spaces."

“The Russian soldier prefers hand-to-hand combat. His ability to endure hardship without flinching is truly amazing. Such is the Russian soldier whom we came to know and for whom we began to respect a quarter of a century ago."

“It was very difficult for us to get a clear picture of the equipment of the Red Army... Hitler refused to believe that Soviet industrial production could be equal to German. We had little information regarding Russian tanks. We had no idea how many tanks Russian industry was capable of producing per month.
It was difficult to even get maps, since the Russians kept them a great secret. The maps we had were often incorrect and misleading.
We also did not have accurate data about the combat power of the Russian army. Those of us who fought in Russia during the First World War thought it was great, and those who did not know the new enemy tended to underestimate her.”

“The behavior of the Russian troops, even in the first battles, was in striking contrast with the behavior of the Poles and Western allies in defeat. Even surrounded, the Russians continued stubborn fighting. Where there were no roads, the Russians remained inaccessible in most cases. They always tried to break through to the east... Our encirclement of the Russians was rarely successful.”

“From Field Marshal von Bock to the soldier, everyone hoped that soon we would be marching through the streets of the Russian capital. Hitler even created a special sapper team that was supposed to destroy the Kremlin. When we came close to Moscow, the mood of our commanders and troops suddenly changed dramatically. We discovered with surprise and disappointment in October and early November that the defeated Russians had not ceased to exist at all. military force. Over the past weeks, enemy resistance has intensified, and the tension of the fighting increased every day ... "

2. From the memories of German soldiers

“The Russians don’t give up. An explosion, another, everything is quiet for a minute, and then they open fire again..."
“We watched the Russians in amazement. They didn’t seem to care that their main forces were defeated..."
“Loaves of bread had to be chopped with an axe. A few lucky people managed to acquire Russian uniforms..."
“My God, what are these Russians planning to do to us? We will all die here!..”

3. Colonel General (later Field Marshal) von Kleist

“The Russians showed themselves to be first-class warriors from the very beginning, and our successes in the first months of the war were simply due to better preparation. Having gained combat experience, they became first-class soldiers. They fought with exceptional tenacity and had amazing endurance..."

4. General von Manstein (also a future field marshal)

“It often happened that Soviet soldiers raised their hands to show that they were surrendering to us, and after our infantrymen approached them, they again resorted to weapons; or the wounded man feigned death, and then shot at our soldiers from the rear.”

5. Diary of General Halder

“It should be noted the tenacity of individual Russian formations in battle. There have been cases when garrisons of pillboxes blew themselves up along with the pillboxes, not wanting to surrender.” (Entry dated June 24 - the third day of the war.)
“Information from the front confirms that the Russians are fighting everywhere to the last man... It is striking that when capturing artillery batteries, etc. Few surrender." (June 29 is in a week.)
“The fighting with the Russians is extremely stubborn. Only a small number of prisoners were captured." (July 4th - less than two weeks.)

6. Field Marshal Brauchitsch (July 1941)

“The uniqueness of the country and the unique character of the Russians gives the campaign a special specificity. The first serious opponent"

7. Commander of the 41st Tank Corps of the Wehrmacht, General Reinhart

“About a hundred of our tanks, of which about a third were T-IVs, took up their starting positions for a counterattack. From three sides we fired at the Russian iron monsters, but everything was in vain... The Russian giants, echeloned along the front and in depth, came closer and closer. One of them approached our tank, hopelessly stuck in a swampy pond. Without any hesitation, the black monster drove over the tank and crushed it into the mud with its tracks. At this moment a 150 mm howitzer arrived. While the artillery commander warned of the approach of enemy tanks, the gun opened fire, but again to no avail.

One of Soviet tanks approached the howitzer to within 100 meters. The gunners opened fire on him with direct fire and scored a hit - it was like being struck by lightning. The tank stopped. “We knocked him out,” the artillerymen sighed with relief. Suddenly, someone from the gun crew screamed heart-rendingly: “He’s gone again!” Indeed, the tank came to life and began to approach the gun. Another minute, and the shiny metal tracks of the tank slammed the howitzer into the ground like a toy. Having dealt with the gun, the tank continued its journey as if nothing had happened."

Apparently we are talking about a KV-2 attack. Truly a monster.

8. Joseph Goebbels

“Courage is courage inspired by spirituality. The tenacity with which the Bolsheviks defended themselves in their pillboxes in Sevastopol is akin to some kind of animal instinct, and it would be a deep mistake to consider it the result of Bolshevik convictions or upbringing. Russians have always been like this and, most likely, will always remain like this.”

“Stalingrad is a good lesson for the German people, it’s just a pity that those who completed the training are unlikely to be able to use the knowledge they acquired in later life.”

“Russians are not like people, they are made of iron, they do not know fatigue, they do not know fear. Sailors, in the bitter cold, go on the attack in vests. Physically and spiritually, one Russian soldier is stronger than our entire company.”

“Russian snipers and armor-piercers are undoubtedly disciples of God. They lie in wait for us day and night, and do not miss. For 58 days we stormed one - the only house. They stormed in vain... None of us will return to Germany unless a miracle happens. And I don't believe in miracles anymore. Time has turned to the side of the Russians.”

“No, father, God does not exist, or only you have him, in your psalms and prayers, in the sermons of priests and pastors, in the ringing of bells, in the smell of incense, but in Stalingrad he is not. And here you are sitting in the basement, drowning someone’s furniture, you are only twenty-six, and seem to have a head on your shoulders, until recently you were happy with your shoulder straps and shouted “Heil Hitler!” with you, but now here are two options: either die or die. Siberia".

“I’m talking with Chief Sergeant V. He says that the struggle in France was more fierce than here, but more fair. The French capitulated when they realized that further resistance was futile. The Russians, even if it is to no avail, continue to fight... In France or Poland they would have given up long ago, says Sergeant G., but here the Russians continue to fight fanatically.”

“My beloved Tsylla. This, to be honest, is a strange letter, which, of course, no mail will send anywhere, and I decided to send it with my wounded fellow countryman, you know him - this is Fritz Sauber... Every day brings us great sacrifices. We are losing our brothers, but the end of the war is not in sight and, probably, I will not see it, I don’t know what will happen to me tomorrow, I have already lost all hopes of returning home and staying alive. I think everyone German soldier will find his grave here. These snow storms and vast fields covered with snow fill me with mortal horror. It is impossible to defeat the Russians..."

“I thought that the war would be over by the end of this year, but, as you can see, the situation is different ... I think that with regard to the Russians we miscalculated.”

“We are 90 km from Moscow, and it cost us a lot of people killed. The Russians are still putting up very strong resistance, defending Moscow... Until we get to Moscow, there will be more fierce battles. Many who do not even think about this will have to die... During this campaign, many regretted that Russia is not Poland or France, and there is no enemy stronger than the Russians. If another six months pass, we are lost...”

“We are located on the Moscow-Smolensk highway, not far from Moscow... The Russians are fighting fiercely and furiously for every meter of land. Never before have battles been so cruel and difficult, and many of us will no longer see our loved ones...”

“I have been in Russia for more than three months now and have already experienced a lot. Yes, dear brother, sometimes your soul really sinks when you are just a hundred meters away from the damned Russians...”

From the diary of the commander of the 25th Army, General Gunther Blumentritt:

“Many of our leaders greatly underestimated the new enemy. This happened partly because they did not know the Russian people, much less the Russian soldier. Some of our military leaders spent the entire First World War on the Western Front and never fought in the East, so they did not have the slightest idea about the geographical conditions of Russia and the fortitude of the Russian soldier, but at the same time ignored the repeated warnings of prominent military experts on Russia... The behavior of the Russian troops, even in this first battle (for Minsk), was strikingly different from the behavior of the Poles and the troops of the Western allies in conditions of defeat. Even when surrounded, the Russians did not retreat from their lines.”

In development of the topic and in addition to the article Elena Senyavskaya, posted on the website on May 10, 2012, we bring to the attention of readers new article by the same author, published in the magazine

At the final stage of the Great Patriotic War, having liberated Soviet territory occupied by the Germans and their satellites and pursuing the retreating enemy, the Red Army crossed state border THE USSR. From that moment, her victorious path began across the countries of Europe - both those that languished for six years under fascist occupation, and those who acted as an ally of the Third Reich in this war, and across the territory itself. Hitler's Germany. During this advance to the West and the inevitable various contacts with the local population, Soviet military personnel, who had never been outside their own country before, received many new, very contradictory impressions about representatives of other peoples and cultures, which later formed the ethnopsychological stereotypes of their perception of Europeans . Among these impressions, the most important place was occupied by the image of European women. Mentions, and even detailed stories about them, are found in letters and diaries, on the pages of memoirs of many war participants, where lyrical and cynical assessments and intonations most often alternate.

First European country, which the Red Army entered in August 1944, was Romania. In “Notes on the War” by front-line poet Boris Slutsky we find very frank lines: “Suddenly, almost pushed into the sea, Constanta opens up. It almost coincides with the average dream of happiness and “after the war.” Restaurants. Bathrooms. Beds with clean linen. Stalls with reptilian sellers. And - women, smart city women - girls of Europe - the first tribute we took from the vanquished...” Then he describes his first impressions of “abroad”: “European hairdressing salons, where they soap their fingers and do not wash their brushes, the absence of a bathhouse, washing from the basin, “where first the dirt from your hands remains, and then your face is washed”, feather beds instead of blankets - out of disgust caused by everyday life, immediate generalizations were made... In Constance, we first encountered brothels... Our first delight at the fact of the existence of free love quickly passes. It’s not only the fear of infection and the high cost, but also contempt for the very possibility of buying a person... Many were proud of stories like: a Romanian husband complains to the commandant’s office that our officer did not pay his wife the agreed upon one and a half thousand lei. Everyone had a clear consciousness: “This is impossible here”... Probably, our soldiers will remember Romania as a country of syphilitics...” And he concludes that it was in Romania, this European backwater, that “our soldier most of all felt his elevation above Europe.”

Another Soviet officer, Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Fyodor Smolnikov, wrote down his impressions of Bucharest on September 17, 1944 in his diary: “Ambassador Hotel, restaurant, ground floor. I see the idle public walking around, they have nothing to do, they are biding their time. They look at me like I'm a rarity. “Russian officer!!!” I am dressed very modestly, more than modestly. Let be. We will still be in Budapest. This is as true as the fact that I am in Bucharest. First class restaurant. The audience is dressed up, the most beautiful Romanian women stare provocatively (Hereinafter, it is emphasized by the author of the article). We spend the night in a first-class hotel. The capital's street is seething. There is no music, the audience is waiting. The capital, damn it! I will not give in to advertising..."

In Hungary Soviet army faced not only armed resistance, but also insidious blows in the back from the population, when they “killed drunken and lone stragglers in the villages” and drowned them in silos. However, “women, not as depraved as the Romanians, gave in with shameful ease... A little love, a little dissipation, and most of all, of course, fear helped.” Quoting the words of one Hungarian lawyer: “It’s very good that Russians love children so much. It’s too bad that they love women so much,” Boris Slutsky comments: “He did not take into account that Hungarian women also loved Russians, that along with the dark fear that parted the knees of matrons and mothers of families, there was the tenderness of the girls and the desperate tenderness of the soldiers who gave themselves up to the murderers their husbands."

Grigory Chukhrai in his memoirs described such a case in Hungary. His part was stationed in one place. The owners of the house where he and the fighters were located, during the feast, “under the influence of Russian vodka, they relaxed and admitted that they were hiding their daughter in the attic.” The Soviet officers were indignant: “Who do you take us for? We are not fascists! “The owners were ashamed, and soon a lean girl named Mariyka appeared at the table and greedily began to eat. Then, having gotten used to it, she began to flirt and even ask us questions... By the end of dinner, everyone was in a friendly mood and drank to “borotshaz” (friendship). Mariyka understood this toast too straightforwardly. When we went to bed, she appeared in my room wearing only her undershirt. As a Soviet officer, I immediately realized: a provocation was being prepared. “They hope that I will be seduced by the charms of Mariyka, and they will make a fuss. But I won’t give in to provocation,” I thought. And Mariyka’s charms did not attract me - I showed her the door.

The next morning, the hostess, putting food on the table, rattled the dishes. “He’s nervous. The provocation failed!” - I thought. I shared this thought with our Hungarian translator. He burst out laughing.

This is not a provocation! They expressed friendship to you, but you neglected it. Now you are not considered a person in this house. You need to move to another apartment!

Why did they hide their daughter in the attic?

They were afraid of violence. It is customary in our country that a girl, with the approval of her parents, can experience intimacy with many men before getting married. They say here: you don’t buy a cat in a tied bag...”

Young, physically healthy men had a natural attraction to women. But the ease of European morals corrupted some of the Soviet fighters, and convinced others, on the contrary, that relationships should not be reduced to simple physiology. Sergeant Alexander Rodin wrote down his impressions of the visit - out of curiosity! - a brothel in Budapest, where part of it stood for some time after the end of the war: “...After leaving, a disgusting, shameful feeling of lies and falsehood arose, the picture of the woman’s obvious, blatant pretense could not escape my mind... It is interesting that such an unpleasant aftertaste from visiting a brothel remained not only with me, a young man who was also brought up on principles like “not to give a kiss without love, but also with most of our soldiers with whom I had to talk... Around the same days I had to talk with one a beautiful Magyar woman (she somehow knew Russian). When she asked if I liked it in Budapest, I replied that I liked it, but the brothels were embarrassing. "But why?" - asked the girl. Because it’s unnatural, wild,” I explained: “the woman takes the money and then immediately begins to “love!” The girl thought for a while, then nodded in agreement and said: “You’re right: it’s not nice to take money in advance...”

Poland left a different impression. According to the poet David Samoilov, “...in Poland they kept us strict. It was difficult to escape from the location. And pranks were severely punished.” And he gives impressions from this country, where the only positive aspect was the beauty of Polish women. “I can’t say that we liked Poland very much,” he wrote. “Then I didn’t see anything noble or knightly in her.” On the contrary, everything was petty-bourgeois, peasant - both concepts and interests. Yes, and in eastern Poland they looked at us warily and semi-hostilely, trying to rip off what they could from the liberators. However, the women were comfortingly beautiful and flirtatious, they captivated us with their mannerisms, cooing speech, where everything suddenly became clear, and they themselves were sometimes captivated by the rough male strength or the soldier’s uniform. And their pale, emaciated former admirers, gritting their teeth, went into the shadows for the time being...”

But not all assessments of Polish women looked so romantic. On October 22, 1944, junior lieutenant Vladimir Gelfand wrote in his diary: “The city I left with the Polish name [Vladov] loomed in the distance. with beautiful Polish girls, proud to the point of disgust . ... They told me about Polish women: they lured our soldiers and officers into their arms, and when it came to bed, they cut off their penises with a razor, strangled them by the throat with their hands, and scratched their eyes. Crazy, wild, ugly females! You need to be careful with them and not get carried away by their beauty. And the Polish women are beautiful, they are scoundrels.” However, there are other moods in his records. On October 24, he records the following meeting: “Today my companions to one of the villages turned out to be beautiful Polish girls. They complained about the lack of guys in Poland. They also called me “sir”, but they were inviolable. I patted one of them gently on the shoulder, in response to her remark about men, and consoled her with the thought of the road to Russia being open to her - there were a lot of men there. She hurried to step aside, and in response to my words she replied that there would be men for her here too. We said goodbye with a handshake. So we didn’t come to an agreement, but they’re nice girls, even though they’re Polish.” A month later, on November 22, he wrote down his impressions of the first large Polish city he met, Minsk-Mazowiecki, and among the descriptions of architectural beauty and the number of bicycles that amazed him among all categories of the population, he gave a special place to the townspeople: “A noisy idle crowd, women, as one, in white special hats, apparently worn by the wind, which make them look like forties and surprise them with their novelty. Men in triangular caps and hats are fat, neat, empty. How many of them! ... Painted lips, penciled eyebrows, affectation, excessive delicacy . How different is this from natural life human. It seems that people themselves live and move specifically just to be looked at by others, and everyone will disappear when the last viewer leaves the city...”

Not only Polish city women, but also village women left a strong, albeit contradictory, impression of themselves. “I was amazed by the love of life of the Poles who survived the horrors of war and the German occupation,” recalled Alexander Rodin. – Sunday afternoon in a Polish village. Beautiful, elegant, in silk dresses and stockings, Polish women, who on weekdays are ordinary peasant women, rake manure, barefoot, and work tirelessly around the house. Older women also look fresh and young. Although there are also black frames around the eyes...“He further quotes his diary entry from November 5, 1944: “Sunday, the residents are all dressed up. They are going to visit each other. Men in felt hats, ties, jumpers. Women in silk dresses, bright, unworn stockings. Pink-cheeked girls are “panenki”. Beautifully curled blonde hairstyles... The soldiers in the corner of the hut are also animated. But anyone who is sensitive will notice that this is a painful revival. Everyone laughs loudly to show that they don’t care, don’t even care at all, and aren’t envious at all. What are we, worse than them? The devil knows what happiness this is - a peaceful life! After all, I haven’t seen her at all in civilian life!” His fellow soldier, Sergeant Nikolai Nesterov, wrote in his diary that same day: “Today is a day off, the Poles, beautifully dressed, gather in one hut and sit in couples. It even makes you feel a little uneasy. Wouldn’t I be able to sit like that?..”

Soldier Galina Yartseva is much more merciless in her assessment of “European morals,” reminiscent of a “feast during the plague.” On February 24, 1945, she wrote to a friend from the front: “...If it were possible, we could send wonderful parcels of their captured items. There is something. This would be our barefoot and undressed people. What cities I saw, what men and women. And looking at them, you are overcome by such evil, such hatred! They walk, they love, they live, and you go and free them. They laugh at the Russians - "Schwein!" Yes Yes! Bastards... I don’t love anyone except the USSR, except those peoples who live among us. I don’t believe in any friendships with Poles and other Lithuanians...”

In Austria, where Soviet troops burst in in the spring of 1945, they were faced with “general capitulation”: “Entire villages were ruled by white rags. Elderly women raised their hands when meeting a man in a Red Army uniform.” It was here, according to B. Slutsky, that the soldiers “got their hands on the fair-haired women.” At the same time, “the Austrians did not turn out to be overly intractable. The vast majority of peasant girls married “spoiled.” The vacationing soldiers felt like they were in Christ's bosom. In Vienna, our guide, a bank official, was amazed at the persistence and impatience of the Russians. He believed that gallantry was enough to get everything he wanted from Vienna.” That is, it was not only a matter of fear, but also certain features of the national mentality and traditional behavior.

And finally, Germany. And the women of the enemy - mothers, wives, daughters, sisters of those who, from 1941 to 1944, mocked the civilian population in the occupied territory of the USSR. How did Soviet soldiers see them? Appearance German women walking in a crowd of refugees is described in the diary of Vladimir Bogomolov: “Women - old and young - in hats, scarves with a turban and just a canopy, like our women, in elegant coats with fur collars and in tattered, incomprehensible cut clothes. Many women wear sunglasses to avoid squinting from the bright May sun and thereby protect their faces from wrinkles...." Lev Kopelev recalled a meeting in Allenstein with evacuated Berliners: "There are two women on the sidewalk. Intricate hats, one even with a veil. Good-quality coats, and they themselves are smooth and well-groomed.” And he quoted soldiers’ comments about them: “chickens”, “turkeys”, “if only they were so smooth...”

How did the German women behave when meeting with Soviet troops? In the report of the deputy. Head of the Main Political Directorate of the Red Army Shikin in the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks G.F. Alexandrov dated April 30, 1945 about the attitude of the civilian population of Berlin to the personnel of the Red Army troops said: “As soon as our units occupy one or another area of ​​the city, the residents They gradually begin to take to the streets, almost all of them have white bands on their sleeves. When meeting our military personnel, many women raise their hands up, cry and shake with fear, but as soon as they are convinced that the soldiers and officers of the Red Army are not at all what their fascist propaganda portrayed them to be, this fear quickly passes, more and more the population takes to the streets and offers their services, trying in every possible way to emphasize their loyal attitude to the Red Army.”

The winners were most impressed by the humility and prudence of the German women. In this regard, it is worth citing the story of mortarman N.A. Orlov, who was shocked by the behavior of German women in 1945: “No one in the Minbat killed German civilians. Our special officer was a “Germanophile.” If this happened, then the reaction of the punitive authorities to such an excess would be quick. Regarding violence against German women. It seems to me that when talking about this phenomenon, some people “exaggerate things” a little. I remember an example of a different kind. We went to some German city and settled in houses. “Frau,” about 45 years old, appears and asks for “Ger Commandant.” They brought her to Marchenko. She claims to be in charge of the quarter and has collected 20 German women for sexual (!!!) service of Russian soldiers. Marchenko understood German, and to the political officer Dolgoborodov standing next to me, I translated the meaning of what the German woman said. The reaction of our officers was angry and abusive. The German woman was driven away, along with her “squad” ready for service. In general, the German submission stunned us. They expected it from the Germans guerrilla warfare, sabotage. But for this nation, order - "Ordnung" - is above all. If you are a winner, then they are “on their hind legs”, and consciously and not under duress. This is the psychology..."

David Samoilov cites a similar incident in his military notes: “In Arendsfeld, where we had just settled down, a small crowd of women with children appeared. They were led by a huge mustachioed German woman of about fifty - Frau Friedrich. She stated that she was a representative of the civilian population and asked to register the remaining residents. We replied that this could be done as soon as the commandant’s office appeared.

This is impossible,” said Frau Friedrich. - There are women and children here. They need to be registered.

The civilian population confirmed her words with screams and tears.

Not knowing what to do, I invited them to take the basement of the house where we were located. And they, reassured, went down to the basement and began to settle down there, waiting for the authorities.

“Herr Commissar,” Frau Friedrich told me complacently (I was wearing a leather jacket). “We understand that soldiers have small needs. “They are ready,” Frau Friedrich continued, “to give them several younger women for...

I did not continue the conversation with Frau Friedrich.”

After communicating with residents of Berlin on May 2, 1945, Vladimir Bogomolov wrote in his diary: “We are entering one of the surviving houses. Everything is quiet, dead. We knock and ask you to open it. You can hear whispering, muffled and excited conversations in the corridor. Finally the door opens. The ageless women, huddled in a tight group, bow fearfully, low and obsequiously. German women are afraid of us, they were told that Soviet soldiers, especially Asians, would rape and kill them... Fear and hatred are on their faces. But sometimes it seems that they like to be defeated - their behavior is so helpful, their smiles and words are so touching. These days there are stories in circulation about how our soldier entered a German apartment, asked for a drink, and the German woman, as soon as she saw him, lay down on the sofa and took off her tights.”

“All German women are depraved. They have nothing against being slept with." , - this opinion existed in the Soviet troops and was supported not only by many illustrative examples, but also by their unpleasant consequences, which military doctors soon discovered.

Directive of the Military Council of the 1st Belorussian Front No. 00343/Ш dated April 15, 1945 stated: “During the presence of troops on enemy territory, cases of venereal diseases among military personnel increased sharply. A study of the reasons for this situation shows that sexually transmitted diseases are widespread among Germans. The Germans, before the retreat, and also now, in the territory we occupied, took the path of artificially infecting German women with syphilis and gonorrhoea in order to create large centers for the spread of sexually transmitted diseases among Red Army soldiers».

The Military Council of the 47th Army reported on April 26, 1945 that “...In March, the number of sexually transmitted diseases among military personnel increased compared to February of this year. four times. ... The female part of the German population in the surveyed areas is affected by 8-15%. There are cases when the enemy deliberately leaves German women with venereal diseases behind to infect military personnel.”

To implement the Resolution of the Military Council of the 1st Belorussian Front No. 056 of April 18, 1945 on the prevention of venereal diseases in the troops of the 33rd Army, the following leaflet was issued:

“Comrade military personnel!

You are being seduced by German women whose husbands visited all the brothels in Europe, became infected themselves and infected their German women.

Before you are those German women who were specially left by the enemy to spread venereal diseases and thereby incapacitate the Red Army soldiers.

We must understand that our victory over the enemy is close and that soon you will have the opportunity to return to your families.

With what eyes will someone who brings a contagious disease look into the eyes of their loved ones?

Can we, warriors of the heroic Red Army, be the source of infectious diseases in our country? NO! For the moral image of a Red Army warrior must be as pure as the image of his Motherland and family!”

Even in the memoirs of Lev Kopelev, who angrily describes the facts of violence and looting by Soviet military personnel in East Prussia, there are lines that reflect the other side of the “relationships” with the local population: “They talked about the obedience, servility, ingratiation of the Germans: this is what they are like, for they sell a loaf of bread and their wives and daughters.” The disgusting tone in which Kopelev conveys these “stories” implies their unreliability. However, they are confirmed by many sources.

Vladimir Gelfand described in his diary his courtship of a German girl (the entry was made six months after the end of the war, on October 26, 1945, but still very typical): “I wanted to thoroughly enjoy the caresses of pretty Margot - kisses and hugs alone were not enough. I expected more, but did not dare to demand and insist. The girl's mother was pleased with me. Still would! At the altar of trust and favor from my relatives, I brought sweets and butter, sausage, and expensive German cigarettes. Already half of these products are enough to have complete grounds and the right to do anything with your daughter in front of the mother’s eyes, and she will not say anything against. For food today is more valuable than even life, and even such a young and sweet sensual woman as the gentle beauty Margot.”

Interesting diary entries were left by the Australian war correspondent Osmar White, who in 1944-1945. was in Europe in the ranks of the 3rd American Army under the command of George Paton. This is what he wrote down in Berlin in May 1945, literally a few days after the end of the assault: “I walked through the night cabarets, starting with Femina near Potsdammerplatz. It was a warm and humid evening. The smell of sewage and rotting corpses filled the air. The façade of Femina was covered with futuristic nudes and advertisements in four languages. The dance hall and restaurant were filled with Russian, British and American officers escorting (or hunting for) the women. A bottle of wine cost $25, a horse meat and potato hamburger cost $10, and a pack of American cigarettes cost a staggering $20. The women of Berlin had their cheeks rouged and their lips painted so that it seemed as if Hitler had won the war. Many women wore silk stockings. The lady hostess of the evening opened the concert in German, Russian, English and French. This provoked a barb from the Russian artillery captain who was sitting next to me. He leaned towards me and said in decent English: “Such a quick transition from national to international! RAF bombs are great professors, aren't they?"

The general impression of European women that Soviet military personnel had was sleek and elegant (in comparison with their war-weary compatriots in the half-starved rear, on lands liberated from occupation, and even with front-line friends dressed in washed out tunics), approachable, selfish, promiscuous or cowardly. submissive. The exceptions were Yugoslav and Bulgarian women. The stern and ascetic Yugoslav partisans were perceived as comrades and were considered inviolable. And given the strict morals in the Yugoslav army, “the partisan girls probably looked at the PPZH [field wives] as beings of a special, nasty kind.” Boris Slutsky recalled about Bulgarian women this way: “...After Ukrainian complacency, after Romanian debauchery, the severe inaccessibility of Bulgarian women struck our people. Almost no one boasted of victories. This was the only country where officers were often accompanied on walks by men, and almost never by women. Later, the Bulgarians were proud when they were told that the Russians were going to return to Bulgaria for brides - the only ones in the world who remained pure and untouched.”

The Czech beauties who joyfully greeted the Soviet soldiers-liberators left a pleasant impression. Confused tank crews from combat vehicles covered with oil and dust, decorated with wreaths and flowers, said to each other: “...Something is a tank bride, to clean it up. And the girls, you know, are hooking them. Good people. I haven’t seen such sincere people for a long time...” The friendliness and cordiality of the Czechs was sincere. “...- If it were possible, I would kiss all the soldiers and officers of the Red Army because they liberated my Prague,” said ... a Prague tram worker to the general friendly and approving laughter,” - this is how he described the atmosphere in the liberated Czech capital and the mood of local residents on May 11, 1945. Boris Polevoy.

But in other countries through which the winning army passed, the female part of the population did not command respect. “In Europe, women gave up and changed before anyone else...” wrote B. Slutsky. - I have always been shocked, confused, disoriented by lightness, shameful lightness love relationship. Decent women, certainly unselfish, were like prostitutes - hasty availability, desire to avoid intermediate stages, disinterest in the motives that push a man to get closer to them. Like people, from all the lexicon love lyrics who recognized three obscene words, they reduced the whole matter to a few body movements, causing resentment and contempt among the most yellow-mouthed of our officers... The restraining motives were not ethics at all, but the fear of getting infected, the fear of publicity, of pregnancy,” and added that in the conditions conquest, “general depravity covered and hid the special female depravity, made it invisible and unashamed.”

However, among the motives that contributed to the spread of “international love”, despite all the prohibitions and harsh orders of the Soviet command, there were several more: women’s curiosity for “exotic” lovers and the unprecedented generosity of Russians towards the object of their affection, which distinguished them favorably from stingy European men.

Junior Lieutenant Daniil Zlatkin ended up in Denmark, on the island of Bornholm, at the very end of the war. In his interview, he said that the interest of Russian men and European women in each other was mutual: “We didn’t see women, but we had to... And when we arrived in Denmark... it’s free, please. They wanted to check, test, try the Russian people, what it is, how it is, and it seemed to work better than the Danes. Why? We were selfless and kind... I gave a box of chocolates for half a table, I gave 100 roses to a stranger... for her birthday..."

At the same time, few people thought about a serious relationship or marriage, due to the fact that the Soviet leadership clearly outlined its position on this issue. The Resolution of the Military Council of the 4th Ukrainian Front dated April 12, 1945 stated: “1. Explain to all officers and all personnel of the front troops that marriage with foreign women is illegal and is strictly prohibited. 2. About all cases of military personnel marrying foreigners, as well as about the connections of our people with hostile elements foreign countries report immediately upon command to bring those responsible to justice for loss of vigilance and violation of Soviet laws.” The directive from the head of the Political Directorate of the 1st Belorussian Front dated April 14, 1945 read: “According to the head of the Main Personnel Directorate of NGOs, the Center continues to receive applications from officers of the active army with a request to sanction marriages with women of foreign countries (Poles, Bulgarians, Czechs) and etc.). Such facts should be considered as a dulling of vigilance and dulling of patriotic feelings. Therefore, it is necessary in political and educational work to pay attention to a deep explanation of the inadmissibility of such acts on the part of Red Army officers. Explain everything officers who does not understand the futility of such marriages, the inadvisability of marrying foreign women, even to the point of direct prohibition, and not allow a single case.”

And the women had no illusions about the intentions of their gentlemen. “At the beginning of 1945, even the stupidest Hungarian peasant women did not believe our promises. European women were already aware that we were forbidden to marry foreigners, and they suspected that there was a similar order also about appearing together in a restaurant, cinema, etc. This did not prevent them from loving our ladies’ men, but it gave this love a purely “out-of-the-way” [carnal] character,” wrote B. Slutsky.

In general, it should be recognized that the image of European women formed by the soldiers of the Red Army in 1944-1945, with rare exceptions, turned out to be very far from the suffering figure with hands chained, looking with hope from the Soviet poster “Europe will be free!” .

Notes
Slutsky B. Notes about the war. Poems and ballads. St. Petersburg, 2000. P. 174.
Right there. pp. 46-48.
Right there. pp. 46-48.
Smolnikov F.M. Let's fight! Diary of a front-line soldier. Letters from the front. M., 2000. pp. 228-229.
Slutsky B. Decree. op. pp. 110, 107.
Right there. P. 177.
Chukhrai G. My war. M.: Algorithm, 2001. pp. 258-259.
Rodin A. Three thousand kilometers in the saddle. Diaries. M., 2000. P. 127.
Samoilov D. People of one option. From military notes // Aurora. 1990. No. 2. P. 67.
Right there. pp. 70-71.
Gelfand V.N. Diaries 1941-1946. http://militera.lib.ru/db/gelfand_vn/05.html
Right there.
Right there.
Rodin A. Three thousand kilometers in the saddle. Diaries. M., 2000. P. 110.
Right there. pp. 122-123.
Right there. P. 123.
Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation. F. 372. Op. 6570. D; 76. L. 86.
Slutsky B. Decree. op. P. 125.
Right there. pp. 127-128.
Bogomolov V.O. Germany Berlin. Spring 1945 // Bogomolov V.O. My life, or did I dream about you?.. M.: Magazine “Our Contemporary”, No. 10-12, 2005, No. 1, 2006. http://militera.lib.ru/prose/russian/bogomolov_vo/03. html
Kopelev L. Keep forever. In 2 books. Book 1: Parts 1-4. M.: Terra, 2004. Ch. 11. http://lib.rus.ec/b/137774/read#t15
Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (hereinafter referred to as RGASPI). F. 17. Op. 125. D. 321. L. 10-12.
From an interview with N.A. Orlov on the “I Remember” website. http://www.iremember.ru/minometchiki/orlov-naum-aronovich/stranitsa-6.html
Samoilov D. Decree. op. P. 88.
Bogomolov V.O. My life, or did I dream about you?.. // Our contemporary. 2005. No. 10-12; 2006. No. 1. http://militera.lib.ru/prose/russian/bogomolov_vo/03.html
From the Political Report on communicating to the personnel the directive of Comrade. Stalin No. 11072 dated April 20, 1945 in the 185th Infantry Division. April 26, 1945 Quote. by: Bogomolov V.O. Decree. op. http://militera.lib.ru/prose/russian/bogomolov_vo/02.html
Quote By: Bogomolov V.O. Decree. op. http://militera.lib.ru/prose/russian/bogomolov_vo/02.html
Right there.
Right there.
State Archives Russian Federation. F. r-9401. Op. 2. D. 96. L.203.
Kopelev L. Decree. op. Ch. 12. http://lib.rus.ec/b/137774/read#t15
Gelfand V.N. Decree. op.
White Osmar. Conquerors" Road: An Eyewitness Account of Germany 1945. Cambridge University Press, 2003. XVII, 221 pp. http://www.argo.net.au/andre/osmarwhite.html
Slutsky B. Decree. op. P. 99.
Right there. P. 71.
Polevoy B. Liberation of Prague // From the Soviet Information Bureau... Journalism and essays of the war years. 1941-1945. T. 2. 1943-1945. M.: APN Publishing House, 1982. P. 439.
Right there. pp. 177-178.
Right there. P. 180.
From an interview with D.F. Zlatkin dated June 16, 1997 // Personal archive.
Quote By: Bogomolov V.O. Decree. op. http://militera.lib.ru/prose/russian/bogomolov_vo/04.html
Right there.
Slutsky B. Decree. op. pp. 180-181.

The article was prepared with the financial support of the Russian Humanitarian Research Foundation, project No. 11-01-00363a.

The design uses a Soviet poster from 1944 “Europe will be free!” Artist V. Koretsky

Let's continue the excursion to SS.
It is generally accepted that these were elite units of Germany and the Fuhrer's favorites. Where problems or crises arose, the SS appeared and... They turned the situation around? Not always. If in March 1943 the SS men recaptured Kharkov from us, then Kursk Bulge they failed.
Indeed, the Waffen-SS fought desperately and incredibly bravely. The same “dead head” ignored orders prohibiting hand-to-hand combat with Soviet troops.
But courage, and even crazy courage, is not everything in war. Not everyone. They say that cowards and heroes die first. And the cautious and prudent survive.
In the first year of the war, the Wehrmacht was skeptical about the SS troops. If the level of political training was beyond praise, then tactically and technically the SS were an order of magnitude worse than the army. How much could Theodor Eicke, a former police informant, a former patient of a psychiatric hospital and a former boss concentration camp Dachau? How much did he understand about military affairs? When he flew to Hitler's headquarters in the summer of 1942, hysterically complaining about huge losses, was it not his fault?
“Butcher Eicke”, as he was called in the Wehrmacht for his neglect of personnel losses. On February 26, his plane will be shot down and he will be buried near Kharkov. Where his grave is is unknown.
Well, good.
And in 1941, Wehrmacht soldiers ironically called the SS men “tree frogs” for their spotted camouflage. True, then they began to wear it themselves. And supply... Army generals tried to supply the Totenkopfs secondarily. What's the point of giving the best topics, who, of all types of combat, has mastered only frenzied attacks at any cost? They will die anyway.
Only by 1943 did the situation level out. The SS began to fight no worse than the Wehrmacht. But not due to the fact that the level of training has increased. Due to the fact that the level of training in the most German army. Did you know that the lieutenant courses in Germany lasted only three months? And they criticize the Red Army for the 6-month training period...
Yes, the quality of the Wehrmacht was steadily declining. The strong professionals of France and Poland were eliminated by 1943. In their place came poorly trained young people of new conscription ages. And there was no one left to teach them. Someone rotted in the Sinyavinsky swamps, someone jumped on one leg in Germany, someone carried logs in the Vyatka logging sites.
Meanwhile, the Red Army was learning. I learned quickly. The qualitative superiority over the Germans grew so much that in 1944, Soviet troops managed to carry out offensive operations with a devastating loss ratio. 10:1 in our favor. Although according to all the rules the losses are 1:3. For one lost defender there are 3 attackers.

No, this is not Operation Bagration. This is the undeservedly forgotten Iasi-Chisinau operation. Perhaps a record in terms of loss ratio for the entire war.
During the operation, Soviet troops lost 12.5 thousand people killed and missing and 64 thousand wounded, while German and Romanian troops lost 18 divisions. 208,600 German and Romanian soldiers and officers were captured. They lost up to 135,000 people killed and wounded. 208 thousand were captured.
System military training in the USSR it defeated a similar one in the Reich.
Our Guard was born in battles. The German SS are children of propaganda.
What were the SS men like in the eyes of the Germans themselves?
However, a small lyrical digression.
It is no secret that a huge number of myths have accumulated around the Great Patriotic War. For example, this: the Red Army fought with one rifle between three. Few people know that this phrase has historical roots.
She comes from... "Short Course of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks).
Yes, the Bolsheviks did not hide the truth. Truth, about... About the Russian Imperial Army.
"The Tsarist army suffered defeat after defeat. German artillery
bombarded the royal troops with a hail of shells. The tsarist army did not have enough guns,
There weren't enough shells, not even enough rifles. Sometimes for three soldiers
there was only one rifle."

Or here's another myth. The famous dialogue between two marshals: Zhukov and Eisenhower wanders from book to book. Like, Zhukov boasted that he sent infantry ahead of tanks through minefields so that they could clear the passages with their bodies.
Let us give up on the fact that the weight of a person will not detonate an anti-tank mine. That it is useless to launch infantry at them. Let's forget about it. I'm wondering: where did this myth come from?
And here's where...
Gunther Fleischmann. SS man from the Viking division.
This is the episode we find in his memoirs.
1940 France. City of Metz. Fleischman is a staff radio operator. Yes, not just anyone, but Rommel himself, the future “Desert Fox”. Rommel then commanded the 7th Panzer Division, to which the SS Regiment Das Reich was assigned.
There are howitzers behind the city itself. The city itself is tightly covered by French anti-aircraft guns. There is a mixed minefield in front of the city. Both anti-personnel and anti-tank mines. What is Rommel doing?
Sends his radio operator as far forward as possible to determine and report the location of enemy batteries. The reconnaissance group completely dies on the way. Almost, otherwise the memoirs would not have survived. Gunther gets to the hedge and there tries to reach out to Rommel: they say that everything is lost:
"- Iron Horse! Iron Horse! Firefly-1 is calling you!
- How are you doing, private?
- Herr General, Kleck and Maurer are killed. I ask permission to return to the rear.
“We need to establish the location of these positions at all costs, private.” Do you have any weapons?
- That's right, Herr General! I still have Grosler's MP-38.
- That's it, son. Try to get closer. As close as possible. I'm counting on you...
- That's right, Herr General. End of connection."
So what's next? And then this:
“Looking at the field, I distinguished a signalman waving red and blue flags. This was a signal to get in touch. I was not afraid of surprises here, in the hedge, remembering Klek’s words that it was inconvenient to place mines here, so I calmly sat down and after simple manipulations with the circuit began to call the “Iron Horse”.
“Our plans have changed,” Herr General informed me. “Stay where you are, and don’t stick your stupid head out uselessly.”
- I don’t understand, Herr General!
- Son, sit where you are. And stay in touch. I have prepared a gift for you here. End of connection.
- Who are you with? - the Rottenfuehrer was curious.
- With my commander.
- What gift was he talking about?
- He knows better.
Some time passed before we understood what Herr General meant. Heinkel medium bombers and their Ju-87 dive brethren appeared in the sky. The dive bombers were entrusted with the task of targeted bombing, while the Heinkels were engaged in carpet bombing. Metz was engulfed in flames.
“Thank you, Herr General,” I conveyed, pressing the transmit key.”
Everything is fine? Have you suppressed the artillery?
No. The French only reduced the intensity of the fire.
And Rommel sends his soldiers to attack.
“I noticed our soldiers running across the field.
- There are mines! - I yelled into the microphone.
Herr General knew this. Special-purpose armored personnel carriers and half-track all-terrain vehicles appeared on the field. The mines went off, people were torn to pieces, and equipment was damaged. An act of cruel madness was being committed before my eyes.
Just a few minutes later, the soldiers of the reserve company reached me. These were soldiers from my company, the one in which I fought. They cleared the way for the SS, Wehrmacht and 7th Panzer. And then I realized that if I had not been a radio operator, the fate of being written off would have awaited me."
Again.
THE GENERAL WAS AWARE OF THE MINES.
What, Frau still gives birth to kinders?
Or are there other categories in war than the view from the trench?
Apparently, this incident influenced Fleischman so much that he began to think about what was happening.
“For example, reports began to arrive from units of the SS “Totenkopf” concerning certain events in the town of Drancy. I had already heard that in Drancy they had set up either a camp or a prison for prisoners of war. However, not only for prisoners of war. More In addition, it was ordered that all trains traveling to Drancy and to some stations east of this city from Limoges, Lyon, Chartres, etc. All trains of this kind were traveling from France east to Strasbourg, where they then crossed border of Germany, solely with the knowledge of the SS. I had no idea then that the mentioned trains were transporting people to the camps in September-October 1940. My duties included sending the corresponding report to the SS headquarters officer, and they knew what to do. it was necessary to immediately notify superiors about the passage of trains from the cities listed above.Every time information about trains arrived, I was even kicked out of the radio operator's room and allowed to return there only some time later, when the information received was processed.
I once asked Gleizpunkt and Engel what kind of secret trains they were, but they just grinned in response. I, perplexed, asked what was funny here, but never received a clear answer. Out of principle, I pestered both colleagues until Gleizpunkt asked me:
- Kager, what do you think these trains can transport?
I replied that I had no idea, and Gleizpunkt asked me a question with a laugh:
- Listen, have you seen many Jews on the streets of Paris?
They say that the Germans did not know about the death camps. This is wrong.
"We all knew about Dachau and Buchenwald, but with clear conscience I can say that in 1940 I had no idea what was happening there. I always believed that there were political re-education centers for criminals there, where they were taught to respect existing laws. I believed that if someone violated German laws, he deserved several years in Dachau or Buchenwald.
But I absolutely did not understand why we needed to drag Jews from another country to Germany."
They knew everything.
“...I didn’t understand why Gleizpunkt and Engel laughed at this. And they laughed maliciously and with such an air as if they knew much more than me.”
He just started to think. Epiphany will come on the Eastern Front.
By the way, about the Eastern Front.
We all know that the Great Patriotic War began on June 22.
And when did they start fighting on the Soviet-German front?
Here Fleischman claims that...
Earlier.
Back on June 20, Friday, he was thrown from an airplane into the territory of the USSR as part of a reconnaissance and sabotage group.
On the night of June 20-21, the SS group meets with... With a partisan detachment:
There were a lot of partisans. Fires were laid in holes dug in the ground; this was clearly done for camouflage purposes. There were also tents made from tablecloths, curtains or who knows what. According to my estimates, there were at least 40 people in the camp. We decided to eat some canned stew and our guide sat down next to us.
“The village is very close,” he said.
- What kind of village? - Detwiler asked him.
“Village,” answered the guide. - We'll see you off. You will be there to listen. Eat first.
Glancing approvingly at our buttonholes, the old man said with a smile:
- SS.
Other partisans began to sit down with us. Among them was a woman of about thirty in shabby clothes. But, despite her clothes and her dirty face, she seemed beautiful to me. With her presence, the atmosphere became somewhat lighter.
- Who you are? - I asked the old guide again. - And where are we?
Hearing my question, the rest of the old man’s forest brothers began to smile, as if they knew something that we didn’t know about.
- We call him Father Demetrius. And my name is Rachel. Welcome to Ukraine.
Nothing bothers you?
Personally, I was confused by the name Rachel - a typical Jewish name.
Who was that? UPA? What kind of "partisans" are they? Unfortunately, Gunther does not answer this question. But he clarifies that these places are about thirty kilometers from Kovel.
During the day, intelligence transmits messages about the composition of the Red Army units in the offensive zone.
On the 22nd something happened that we all know about. But what happened next when German troops entered the territory of the USSR.
"The advance of the column slowed down. About a kilometer from the checkpoint, we noticed a group of SS police soldiers on the side of the road. Most had MP-40 submachine guns slung over their shoulders, and in general they looked more like officers - in a neat, tailored uniform, they clearly showed up not here from the front line. Having driven another 500 meters, on both sides of the road we saw gallows made of freshly hewn logs dug into the ground. There were about 50 of them on each side, and on each one there was a hanged man dangling. It was as if we were following through a tunnel of gallows. And the strangest thing is "We didn't see a single military man among the hanged. They were all civilians! To the right of the road on the gallows, I suddenly recognized with horror Father Demetrius and Rachel among the executed."
The Germans started the war and the first thing they did was hang the Ukrainians. The same ones who, the day before yesterday, provided assistance to the SS intelligence officers.
“At the end of the row of gallows, a ditch was dug into which the bodies of the dead Russian soldiers were dumped. Looking closer, I realized that they were lying in rows - as if they were first brought in groups to the edge of the ditch, and then shot, in order to immediately bring the next one. Not far from the ditch they stood SS police soldiers and poured alcohol straight from the bottle into themselves. When our column increased speed, they didn’t even bat an ear. Then someone touched my shoulder. Turning around, I saw Detweiler. He pointed his finger back. Looking at where mine was pointing colleague, I saw SS police soldiers escorting another group of civilians to the ditch. Men, women and children walked obediently with their hands raised. I asked myself: are these also partisans? How could they be them? What crime did they commit to sentenced to death without trial? Our column was moving away, but I managed to see how the SS police soldiers began to divide the doomed into groups - men were sent in one direction, women in the other. Then they began to tear children away from their mothers. It seemed to me that I heard screams through the roar of the engines."
This is not Ehrenburg's "red propaganda".
These are the memories of an SS man from the Viking division.
I have nothing to say here.
“One of the Untersturmführers ordered me to tune the Petrike to a different frequency, then began to call my commander. The second officer, meanwhile, ordered two soldiers of the 2nd SS Regiment to deliver the prisoners to them. One of the Russians looked like an officer, they were wearing a uniform different. And then it dawned on me - this is a political instructor. The Untersturmführer, returning the radio to me, turned to his comrade.
“No, this applies only to political instructors,” he reported.
And literally at that very second he pulled out a pistol and fired several bullets in a row right into the head of the Soviet political instructor. Krendle and I didn't even have time to dodge the splashes of blood and brains."
Here is an illustration of the “Order on Commissioners”. Or here's another...
“We drove through the barrier, then turned left to the building in which the guards were located, and, already approaching the quartermaster’s post, suddenly about 50 meters away near the trees we saw several hundred local civilians stripped naked, guarded by the SS and Ukrainian volunteers. We heard machine gun fire, then Several single shots were heard from behind the trees.
- What is this going on here? Who are these people? - I asked the guard at the quartermaster post.
He took our documents, read them and said:
- Go inside and report your arrival to the quartermaster.
- So what kind of people are these? - Krendl repeated my question.
- And why are they shot? - Lichtel joined.
“Report your arrival to the quartermaster,” the soldier stubbornly repeated, as if not hearing us. “And don’t poke your nose where they’re not asked,” he added in a low voice.
The quartermaster turned out to be a Sturmscharführer in an unbuttoned uniform with a thick cigar in his mouth. After running his eyes over our papers, he ordered us to drive further along the very road from which we had turned. The radio unit is nearby, he assured us, and report to the Hauptsturmführer there.
Lichtel, unable to resist, asked the Sturmscharführer:
- What kind of shooting is there near the trees?
“Fire training classes,” the quartermaster said without looking at him.
- And who are they who are standing naked? The Sturmscharführer measured him with an icy gaze.
“Targets,” came the laconic answer.”
What is there to comment on?
Well, then Gunter tells how the Germans began to sew and turn into pigs. Yes, already in June 1941. Immediately after the Battle of Dubno.
“Thirst, dehydration and moldy bread resulted in illness among personnel.”
I don’t even know where the Germans got their moldy bread from? However, as winter will show, this is a typical ordnung of German quartermasters.
"...often the bread was swarming with worms, and we were not allowed to choose them. Chew yourself with worms, it will be more satisfying, and there will be more proteins, so, apparently, our commanders reasoned. This is how we made up for the lack of proteins. Over time, our meal enriched with a new ritual - a kind of protest. Everyone vied with each other to boast about who had the thickest worm in the crust of bread. And then they began to chew, and with their mouths open, they say, look at me, I’m not squeamish, I’m used to everything. The purest masochism"
“...there was, of course, no need to talk about any hygiene in such conditions. If we found ourselves near a river or lake, no one was allowed to go into the water until all the flasks, tanks and car radiators were filled. But many, instead of bathing, preferred to fall asleep. The officers forced them to bathe, but it was not so easy to wake up an exhausted soldier, and they eventually gave up. The lack of basic hygiene resulted in lice and other parasites, and eventually we reached such a state, when it was no longer possible to distinguish the “bathers” from the “dormouse”. Lice plagued both of them - they were in their hair, in their clothes - everywhere. You could pour buckets of pest control on yourself - there was no use..."
Cultural nation. Very cultured. Only the Eskimos are more cultured, but they are not worth washing at all. Life threatening.
In general, there is no need to comment on Fleischman’s memoirs. Everything is said by himself:
“On the very first night near the Dnieper, the Russians, with the help of missiles and mines, damaged the pontoon bridge. The next day our sappers put it in order, but the next night the Russians put it out of action again. And again our sappers restored the crossing, and then the Russians Once again destroyed it... When the pontoons had to be restored for the fourth time, the rank and file only shook their heads, wondering what kind of wise people our officers were. Meanwhile, the bridge was damaged again the next night as a result of Russian shelling. Then not only the bridge, but also our forward post suffered from Russian mines, and the one located to the north also suffered. railroad bridge. The officers ordered trucks to be delivered to them for withdrawal, but no one bothered to give the order to return fire."
The vaunted SS fight as best they can.
Eventually...
"...again new faces, new names, again hanging around for God knows how long in line for food. I didn’t like all this. It wasn’t to my liking, even if I die. I was not at all eager to make friends with absolutely everyone from the 5th SS Division 14th Corps, but at every morning roll call their names involuntarily entered my ears. As soon as I got used to them, I had to get out of the habit - suddenly new ones sounded from Dietz’s lips. And it infuriated me."
The elite was practically eliminated by the winter of 1941 Soviet soldiers. And then the epiphany begins...
“Then I asked myself, what am I actually fighting for? There was no doubt - this is not my war. And in general, it is of no use to the rank and file, ordinary soldiers and cannot be.”
But he continued to fight, as befits a valiant SS warrior.
“And then we all grabbed our machine guns and rifles and opened fire. In front lay small area, something like a market, where a Russian field hospital was located. Doctors and staff fled, leaving the wounded behind. Some of them were already reaching for their machine guns, and we, realizing that we had just lost Brückner and Biesel, blinded by rage, began to fire indiscriminately at the wounded. Changing the horns of the machine guns, we killed 30-40 people in long bursts. Some, hobbling awkwardly, tried to leave or crawl away, but our bullets overtook them too. At the end of this monstrous, barbaric act, I suddenly noticed a Russian soldier hiding behind a wooden handcart. Pulling out the empty cone, I inserted a new one and blasted the cart to pieces with a burst. The Russian's body, clumsily falling over the wreckage of the cart, fell to the ground. Realizing that this horn had also become empty, I stuck another one into the machine gun and plunged it entirely into the dead body. If it weren’t for the Scharführer who ran up, I would have continued to shoot until the cartridges ran out.
We silently examined the pile of motionless bodies. Someone muttered to Stotz that we took revenge on the Russians for you. Then the Scharführer and I began to walk around the square, I specifically approached the remains of the cart to make sure that the Russian was actually dead.
Krendle came up to me. I looked into his eyes. And I realized what he was thinking about at that moment.
“This is not Belgium.”
Yes. This is not Belgium. It's Russia.
And here the enlightened Europeans waged no ordinary knightly war. No. It was an ordinary colonial war.
The concept of "Untermensch" is no different from the concept of "Negro" or "Indian". Take scalps and destroy the wounded. This is the whole attitude of Europeans towards the so-called “uncivilized peoples”.
Uncivilized...
It's you and me, Russians, who are uncivilized.
But the lousy Germans, covered in blood up to their elbows and knees, are civilized.
Yes, it’s better to be a third world country than such a beast in the form of the SS.
“Looking at what I had done, I didn’t feel any remorse of conscience. Just as I didn’t feel even a shadow of remorse.”
In the end, Fleischman was wounded in the city of Grozny. And he ends up in Warsaw. To the hospital.
"The conditions in the Warsaw hospital were terrible. There was not enough medicine for the wounded, and most of them were doomed to a painful death."
However, we have already talked about the quality of German medicine. It only remains to add that the wounded who died in rear hospitals were not included in combat losses.
They were transferred to the so-called Reserve Army, and its losses were losses... of the civilian population.
Now do you understand why the Germans got such low losses of the Wehrmacht and SS?
By the way, about losses:
“I received letters from home regularly, from them I learned that all my (there were two of them - approx. Ivakin A.) brothers died in this war. Like both cousins, like my uncle, who served in the Kriegsmarine.”
Of the six relatives, five died by the winter of 1943... Are these statistics okay?
Well, how could it be otherwise?
Here our hero describes the attack of the SS men in Normandy. The Elite runs up the hillside:
“I don’t know who the majority of the fighters were - either recruits or veterans, but I watched in horror as they made completely wild mistakes. Some of the fighters decided to throw hand grenades to the top of the hill, which was completely empty an undertaking due to the considerable distance and height. Naturally, the grenades that did not reach the target rolled down, exploding next to the SS soldiers. Other soldiers tried to fire from machine guns in a standing position, which, to put it mildly, is difficult to do on a hillside - the recoil force simply knocks you off your feet "Of course, after the first burst, the fighters fell and rolled down a steep descent, breaking their arms and legs."
This attack began at 4:15 a.m., according to Fleischman. Attack with five infantry waves. The second wave started at 4.25. At 4.35 the third. But, as we see, already at the second echelon the attack simply fizzled out. Because of the dense fire of the allies and the SS men’s own stupidity.
Only at 6 am other waves began to attack.
And at 7.45 it was all over...
“Out of 100 people of the 1st echelon, only about three dozen remained alive.”
On a mountain, on a little hill, there is a bell...
The assault on Height 314 continued for another 6 days.
So who threw meat at whom?
Some kind of Tonton Macoutes, capable only of shooting wounded and civilians.
"I still decided to visit Werner Büchlein. He served in the 3rd tank division SS "Totenkopf" at the time of the invasion of Soviet Union and in 1942, being blown up by a mine, he lost his right leg. We talked about the war and other topics. I felt that he was not inclined to expand on the topics that my father spoke about, but I did not know how to ask him about it more delicately. But then, plucking up courage, he asked bluntly:
At first, Werner took my questions with distrust - you never know, maybe I was sent to sniff out about his defeatist sentiments, this is an undermining morale nation. I conveyed to him the contents of the conversation with my father, explaining that I wanted clarity.
“Entire villages,” he admitted. - Entire villages, and each with a thousand inhabitants, or even more. And they are all in the next world. They simply rounded them up like cattle, placed them at the edge of a ditch and shot them. There were special units that constantly dealt with this. Women, children, old people - all indiscriminately, Karl. And only because they are Jews.
Only then did I realize with all clarity the horror of what Werner had said. I looked at the stump instead of a leg in a pajama pant and thought: no, there is no point in lying or embellishing for this man anymore.
- But why? - I asked.
- And then, that an order is an order. Thank God my leg was blown off in time. I couldn't stand it anymore. Sometimes we shot only old people and children, sometimes men, women and teenagers were sent to camps.
- To the camps?
- To Auschwitz, Treblinka, Belsen, Chelmno. And then they were turned into half-corpses, and then into corpses. New ones were brought in to take their place. And so on for more than one year.
Werner presented these terrible facts in a calm, dispassionate tone, as if they were talking about something taken for granted."
Let me remind you once again who the “Dead Head” consisted of - former concentration camp guards.
And Fleischman himself ended up in the SS by accident. Then, at the beginning of the war, Hitler's guard desperately needed specialists of all stripes, including radio operators. As a result, Gunther was transferred from the Kriegsmarine to the SS.
But he ended the war not by accident. Already an Unterscharführer and commanding a platoon, he simply surrendered to the Americans. Together with the platoon. They spat on everything, lifted the white shirt onto the bayonet and left the battlefield. Even despite the fact that the families of the warriors were praying to end up in those same concentration camps. For the betrayal of their men.
Collective responsibility. Like this. In Germany, enlightened, by the way.
And in June, Gunther Fleischmann was released from captivity. They were not tried for military crimes.
However, I have no doubt that he changed his name. Sometimes he blurts out in the text and his comrades turn to him: “Karl!”
And yes, by the way, he lived in the GDR...