1941

Very often you hear about the fact that Stalin raised Hitler - he trained the officers of the Luftwaffe (military aviation) and Panzerwaffe (tank troops), supplied Germany with raw materials for the production of weapons and food, and provided military assistance in operations. So was the Soviet Union a true friend and ally of Germany, or did someone intentionally distort the facts by simply pulling the proposal out of context? In the article “The USSR and Germany - myths: who taught whom”, the lie (or half-truth, who likes what) was considered that the USSR was training German military personnel.           Myth: The Soviet Union fully met the needs of fascist Germany in raw materials and food, and I.V. Stalin outwitted himself by arming Germany. Some claim that every second German tank was made of Soviet metal.            If desired, you can find a lot of variations on the same topi...

1) The photo is a rather sloppy collage, as evidenced by the contours around the faces of soldiers and women's skirts (traces of carving and the subsequent imposition of one image on another); 2) The soldiers are dressed in the uniform of the soldiers of the Soviet Army, which began to be used since 1956 - see the Order of the Minister of Defense of the USSR "Rules for wearing the uniform of the Soviet Army and Navy in 1956" ( http://www.vedomstva-uniforma.ru/forma1956/1956.html ) 3) The author of this installation is completely unaware of the practice of serving soldiers of the Soviet Army in the territory of occupied Germany and, especially, in the Warsaw Treaty countries including the GDR. Soldiers carried out their service abroad exclusively in the territory of their garrisons, had no opportunity to obtain permission for "dismissal" - i.e. Short-term individual visit from the territory of its military unit for the purpose of recreation and entertainme...

Good day, dear readers. Today, I would again like to talk about the strange "dialectic" observed in the perception of some historical events from the so-called "civilized and democratic" world. Very often we can hear from representatives of the West or his domestic lovers that they say, "The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact is a terrible crime against international law." The fact that a secret agreement with Nazi (!!!) Germany was a manifestation of the criminal essence of the USSR and that the agreement on the division of spheres of influence is a crime in itself against international legitimacy. Today we’ll try to understand whether this is really so. But first, a small note: Firstly, in order to sensibly and objectively evaluate a particular phenomenon, it is necessary to distance oneself from emotions and personal preferences. Our personal sympathy or hostility towards the state should not be a basis for evaluating its actions. Secondly, to evaluat...

by Andrius Dirmeikis On Christmas Eve, 24th December 1943, Erich von Manstein had gone forward to celebrate Christmas with one of the reserve divisions. These celebrations were cut short by a surprising and powerful new offensive, launched by Nikolai Vatutin's 1st Ukrainian Front. Manstein wrote that "another serious storm was brewing on the same wing of the Army Group. It broke loose on 24th December." This new offensive, named Zhitomir-Berdichev Offensive, symbolized the beginning of the great Dnieper-Carpathian Strategic Offensive. It became the main event of the entire 1943-44 winter-spring campaign on the Eastern Front and played a major, if usually unappreciated, role in shaping the subsequent course of events in both Normandy and across the Eastern Front during the summer of 1944. To shore up its front in the Ukraine, the Wehrmacht was compelled to divert huge amounts of men, equipment, and reinforcements that were urgently needed to prepare the forces in France...

In the early morning of December 30, 1941, aterrible picture unfolded in front of a landing party of red sailors on theKerch Peninsula: four thousand citizens from the city, in Bagerovsky Moat, layseven thousand citizens of the city and its environs, torn to pieces by Germanfascists and their minions - policemen and spies. The moat for a kilometer,four meters wide, to a depth of two meters was full of the corpses of women,children, the elderly, adolescents. Near the moat were frozen puddles of blood.There were also baby hats, toys, ribbons, torn buttons, gloves, bottles withnipples, stumps of arms, legs and other parts of the body. All this wassplattered with blood, brains. At the edge of the moat lies a tormented youngwoman. In her dying embrace, an infant is neatly wrapped in a white laceblanket. Next to her lie an 8-year-old girl and a boy of about 5, shot throughby explosive bullets. Their arms gripped her mother’s dress. Next to this womanlies the corpse of another woman. As if...