10 Stalin strikes contour map. Stalin blows. The program of the communists of Russia "10 Stalinist blows"

"The terrain was so heavily pitted with shells that it helped the small and bombarded defending German troops to stop the American advance."

First, as usual, a few words on the topic of possible alternatives.

I decided not to write anything about the Battle of Kursk (yet?). The fact is that they even tried to pervert it somehow in Hollywood. Like, if the Germans had advanced another kilometer, if the Allies hadn’t diverted the Adolf Hitler division, which had lost tanks by that time, with their heroic offensive in Sicily, if Private Ryan hadn’t defused the bomb two seconds before the explosion ... in generally clear. It's from impotence. In short, in fact, the Battle of Kursk looked like an attempt by a very trained person to break through a stone wall with his forehead, behind which they were still waiting for him with an ax.

In general, it was clear to both sides on the Eastern Front that 1944 would be a year of great flogging. It was also clear who would flog, whom and for what. Again, playing as Germany, I would just ask for peace, as long as there is something to trade. I would have asked Stalin, since the Western allies, by and large, didn’t need Germany anymore, but the Union could come in handy. By the way, initially the demand for Germany's unconditional surrender did not belong to Stalin, but to the Western allies.

Hitler, of course, did not survive in this situation, and it is precisely this circumstance that makes me suspicious of modern nationalist doctrines - if the leader demands so much from the people under the motto "we are of the same blood", he owes him no less. And if Stalin demanded to carry Hitler in a cage across Red Square, it was necessary to obey. For this very people. Hitler, on the other hand, chose the strategy of dragging out the war, relying on political factors - say, on a split in the coalition opposing him. If he still had the opportunity to provoke this split, the strategy would look reasonable. There were also problems with the "miracle weapon", and the problems were precisely in the orientation of thinking, so to speak. For example, the Germans had systems projects that could make life extremely difficult for Allied bombers - up to and including anti-aircraft missiles. But Hitler spent money on "V". Bang louder, yes.

"Ten blows" in this text (I repeat - only in THIS text) I define according to the AUTHOR's enumeration, and not according to history textbooks. Why? Because we are talking about the 1944 campaign of the year. For the first time, "ten blows" were listed personally by I.V. Stalin in the report "Twenty-seventh Anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution" dated 6.XI.1944.

Here, I found a very good drawing, convenient for analysis in the first approximation. The strikes are numbered according to the time of application, two bold lines are the states of the front "before" and "after".

Doesn't it seem strange to you that all kinds of revisionists of the Great Patriotic War at such a level (see figure) do not reason at all? Well, there, the suffering of a penalty box, which, under the fire of a detachment, runs into the attack. Loss ratio. The Germans smelled of cologne. Traitors betrayed because Stalin was bad. And so on.

But the full-length figure depicts the reinforced concrete adequacy of the Soviet grand strategy, which is simply pointless to dispute. It is precisely here that the confidence of our General Staff and of all committees of the chiefs of staff is rooted in the fact that the Soviets could conquer the whole world.

See for yourself.

1. January 1944. The German defense near Leningrad was hacked, the Germans were driven back. All? Yep, right now. The northern flank of the Germans - Finland - they needed only when the Germans had the initiative, and they needed it for two specific tasks - to take Leningrad and interrupt the railway. to Murmansk, after which this flank collapsed along the line from the White Sea to the Baltic, and the released troops were pushed into the depths of Russian territory. Neither one nor the other came of it, and with the transition of the initiative to the Soviet troops, the Germans got all the delights of an extended flank, vulnerable communications and an unreliable ally in one bottle. With the first blow, the Soviets actually won the northern flank, driving the Germans into the Baltic. After that, with the active assistance of Roosevelt, who threatened to break off diplomatic relations with the Finns, a negotiation process specifically about peace was launched - already in mid-February, Paasikivi and Kollontai met in Stockholm. Then the USSR made a frankly brilliant political move, removing all the preconditions for negotiations and thus selecting excuses from the Finnish government, which would be happy to *depict* the negotiation process, trying to sit on two chairs. Against the backdrop of Hitler's "ally", who openly threatened the occupation of Finland, the Soviets looked much more preferable. Unfortunately, the Finnish government still needed to be convinced by the task, but more on that later.

2. Korsun-Shevchenko operation. End of January-March. Southern flank. Yeah, yeah, first in the north, then in the south, let the Germans roll the reserves back and forth. Hitler still held the Crimea, and it was right, although, I repeat, in the general case, the strategy of tough defense had already outlived itself by that time. The Germans could theoretically take their chances in a mobile war by surrendering large territories, but alas, their decision space was already more than in the same 42, influenced by purely economic and technical factors.

By the preparatory blow of Vatutin - a specialist in Manstein, by the way ... - the railway line was cut. Odessa-Vilnius, read - communications between GA "Center" and GA "South". Then ours arranged for the Germans the actual Korsun-Shevchenkovsky cauldron, which they cleaned up by February 17th. The operation to liquidate the Nikopol ledge also belongs to the same Stalinist strike. Well, then Hitler himself asked for it, clinging to the manganese deposit. But what choice did he have? When the German defenses collapsed, the Germans just *ran* - it's hard to explain the loss of all heavy weapons by several divisions in another way.

Any special signs of this offensive? There are no special ones. All the same. The Germans adhered to the idea of ​​​​hard defense. What did it mean? This meant that ours, having a maximum one and a half times superiority in people, calmly massed forces to attack where they wanted, which the extended front line only contributed to.

3. Crimea. April May. In terms of meaning, it was already garbage collection with all its charms. The Germans were torn apart mainly by artillery fire and aviation work, the order of the Supreme Commander expressly forbade * spending * people, as a result, German irretrievable losses exceeded ours by an order of magnitude. "No one invited them here." (With)

4. Karelia. Liberation of Vyborg and Petrozavodsk. Hot Finnish guys should have been hurried to think, although I repeat - already after the first Stalinist blow, Finland found itself in the position of "elusive Joe." A rather peculiar theater, a rather peculiar layout of weapons - our superiority in technology was overwhelming, but in the summer in that region, ground equipment does not really help. The Finns fought well, and so well that some of their historians still believe that the stubborn defense of the Finns was somehow useful. Nevertheless, in mid-July, ours simply stopped, because, firstly, people were needed on other fronts, secondly, there were still enough forces to finish off the Finns, and, thirdly, the negotiation process was already underway, and was extremely pragmatic. Don't want the word "surrender" on your resume? For God's sake. Can't you drive out the Germans yourself? Let's help. Oh, you can already... What, what are the limits? What-what 39th year? So, out the door, don't forget to leave, it's time for us to have dinner... What? 40th? Well, it would have been like that for a long time.

Thus, the flanks of the Eastern Front certainly won the first four blows (see the figure), and on the southern flank the troops of our European guests were simply eaten up in encirclement.

5. Belarus. Operation "Bagration", which in the West is called somewhat more dryly "the destruction (destruction) of the army group" Center "". In general, I must say that our propagandists missed a marvelous opportunity to export such names. Normal such bilingualism is for us an operation by name and patronymic, for a foreign consumer it is some kind of "extermination", "devastation", "extermination" and "eradication". Mochilovo, after all. If they don't want to be respected, let them be afraid.

The acquaintance of the first citizen he meets with the operation "Bagration" at best comes down to the fact that he recalls the famous apocrypha, where the Supreme Commander invites Rokossovsky to think, then think again, and then says something like "ah ... with him, let's do In your". What exactly Rokossovsky was asked to think about, the first comer no longer knows.

So. The main idea of ​​defeating the enemy was still to break the defense in a specific sector of the front and introduce mobile formations into the breakthrough with the subsequent exploitation of their achievements - encirclement, etc. In this connection, naturally, the principle of massing forces in the breakthrough sector was applied. In Belarus, at first they were going to attack in the same way. Rokossovsky proposed the following, referring to the conditions of the theater of operations: dividing forces, attack at once all enemy groupings that held defenses at tactical depth. The idea was to deprive these groupings of mobility and the ability to help each other in repulsing the textbook "main strike", gouging them with separate operations on the spot and entering the operational and even strategic space, where no one would get in the way. The famous "rail war", launched on June 20, also had the goal of depriving the Germans of mobility. So that, therefore, they sit quietly while ours operate on them.

At the level of grand strategy, the Germans disgraced themselves in the most shameful way. I don’t know what is the proportion of our intelligence success and their failure, I don’t know who exactly is responsible for the wrong assumption (generals, as usual, blame everything on the Fuhrer in memoirs), but the basic hypothesis was that the Russians would strike south of Pripyat - there it turned out to be a rather beautiful exit to the Vistula and to the Baltic from south to north ... Thank you, of course, that they thought so well of us, but it also turned out well in Belarus.

What I like about Bagration purely aesthetically is that the Germans were paid for the blitzkrieg with the same currency. "Debt by payment is terrible" (c). I'm talking, of course, not only about the coincidence of the dates of occurrence - I'm talking about methods. Let's say, three out of every five aircraft that the Germans had in this direction, ours carried out by bombing airfields. The figures for the daily advance of our troops generally exceed those for these places, achieved by the Germans in 1941. A cauldron near Minsk for a hundred thousand people - it is necessary, it is necessary ... The officers and generals caught there were then led through the streets of Moscow.

I found excerpts from the diary of a German infantry officer.

“27.6. Everything is going backwards. The last forces are still fighting hard fighting in order to cover the bridge. Everyone retreats. Cars are filled with people. Wild escape.

29.6. We continue to leave. The Russians are always trying to overtake us with a parallel pursuit. The partisans destroyed all the bridges.

30.6. Unbearable heat. The horror journey has begun. Everything is up. Bridge over the river Berezina under heavy shelling. We are going through this chaos.

1.7. Everyone was completely out of breath. We move further along the highway to Minsk. Wild traffic jams and congestion. Often shelling right and left. Everything is running. Panic retreat. Much remains on the road.

2.7. The Russians have occupied the highway, and no one else will pass ... Such a retreat has never happened before! You can go crazy."

Yes, please, go: it's a pity, or something ... I repeat: "No one called them here" (c). By the way, at that time, Field Marshal Bush (don't get excited, this is a namesake) was replaced by Field Marshal Model, the commander of the Army Group Center, who had previously been waiting for the Russian offensive as commander of the Northern Ukraine Army Group. Did not help.

In general, the German defense is pretty for a long time ceased to exist. Approximately until the end of summer (the 6th strike is also important here, but more on that later). Reducing the front line worked first on our own, allowing us to release additional forces for the pursuit. The front line moved more than five hundred kilometers to the west.

The offensive ended as it should - communications are stretching, the rear is lagging behind (since July 9, in some directions, our troops have been supplying fuel to the troops by air), the density of enemy troops is increasing ... The following points are most interesting.

Firstly, the Germans hardly repelled our throw to the Gulf of Riga in order to cut the communications of Army Group North. This throw itself was, in a sense, more impudent than the Allied landing at Arnheim, sung in the movie about the bridge too far.

Secondly, the liberation of Lublin (July 23), openly * ordered * by Stalin to specific date(July 26), which was rare. It is understandable, it was necessary to upgrade the government of Poland somewhere, the main advantage of which over London was sanity. It is to this event that the well-known apocrypha relates with Stalin sending his portrait to Churchill and fortune-telling of the latter, how Stalin washed him this time.

Thirdly, the trouble with, God forgive me, the "uprising" in Warsaw. About him later.

So, it was only half of the 10 Stalinist blows. Look again at the drawing. Imagine that it only has the results of hits from 1 to 5, and that's it. Beautiful, isn't it? The Germans started out with a shitty northern flank. And they continue to have it, but already in the Baltics. One ally is withdrawn from the war - Finland - but Russian troops are moving to the border with Romania, so the political (over-military) headache to keep their coalition, the Germans remain and even intensify, because it was easier to defend Finland purely under the terms of the theater of operations. The reduction of the front line is devalued by the fact that a significant part of the troops that were attacked were eaten up in encirclement. In short, the Germans, having suffered irreparable losses, did not solve any of their problems with these victims. If this is not an ideal offensive strategy, then what is an ideal one?

Returning to the topic.

6. Lviv-Sandomierz operation. July August. I am forced to note that this, in general, was a direct action in its purest form, the very one that Sun Tzu branded with the expression "the worst thing is to besiege fortresses." That is, the goals have been set, the tasks have been defined, the enemy has guessed everything and is waiting (although it is difficult to add the word "impatiently" here). And yet, considering this strike on the scale of the entire campaign, it is clear that it solves not only local problems. Firstly, this is the classic pressure on the center, which is necessary to ensure a deep flank breakthrough (7th and 9th strikes, about them below). Secondly, it was necessary to deal with the mobile German reserves that were turning over precisely in those places (GA "Northern Ukraine") before they left anywhere (the Germans were already starting to retreat). Our armies managed to cut through the "Northern Ukraine" GA, but they failed to break through the Carpathians on the move due to supply problems. However, the same problems began with the Germans, as well. our breakthrough to the Carpathians forced them to supply the South Ukraine GA bypassing through the Balkans and Hungary.

Look at the map again. A strike in Belarus, and the Germans are pulling troops there from northern Ukraine. A blow to northern Ukraine - troops are going there from the south. A strike in southern Ukraine (Iasi-Chisinau operation) - and oh my god ... IMHO, Hitler's mistake was that he put the retention of the conquered territories higher than the retention of the allies, which is unreasonable (the same Sun Tzu put "break the enemy's alliances" higher than capturing territory).

For direct action, the operation was extremely successful, especially the breakthrough of our armies across the Vistula (Sandomierz bridgehead, early August). The Germans tried to drive our people out of there in full - there, if I'm not mistaken, the "royal tigers" went into battle for the first time. Although the “Royal Tigers” are so, the cream on the cake, on all those reserves that the Germans pulled up there, weakening, I repeat, the Southern Ukraine Civil Aviation, which allowed ours to carry out the Iasi-Chisinau operation. However, ours concentrated as many as THREE tank armies there (either the 1st or the 3rd one, I don’t remember, then the 5th GTA, then the 4th one came up), and it came out according to the proverb "no matter how much you feed the wolf, but the bear still has more."

7. Iasi-Chisinau operation. August. While the Germans were trying to drive us out of the Vistula, ours began to deal with the German allies. In general, one must understand that it is precisely the threat of a strike from the southeast that can be considered decisive for winning the foreign stage of the war between the USSR and Germany. Of course, breaking down the shortest straight line through Poland is an obvious idea. However, together with a blow through Romania and Hungary, this breakthrough created a situation that is called in chess the "Tarrasch principle" and is formulated, it seems, as follows: "a position is considered lost if it contains two weaknesses that do not compensate for each other." A direct attack through Poland posed a threat to the German lands proper and sharply limited the possibilities of maneuver for those defending themselves against a superior enemy (it was necessary to think before). An attack through Romania and Hungary put the Allies out of action, flirted with the factor of an open flank, and, most importantly, deprived the Germans of oil.

The adoption of this strategy unequivocally confirms that our people relied only on themselves and considered themselves perfectly capable of defeating Hitler without a second front, without threats from the south (from Italy) or from the west.

The humor, so to speak, of this operation lies in the fact that ours arranged a cauldron of the same 6th German army, which had already raked near Stalingrad (with different personnel, of course). Moreover, the flanks that ours pierced, surrounding the Germans, were covered by the same Romanian armies, the 3rd and 4th. This time the matter ended somewhat faster - the offensive began on the 20th, the pocket was formed on the 23rd and was liquidated on the 27th of August. On August 23, the King of Romania, Mihai, summoned the dictator Antonescu and arrested him, and then honestly kept his politicians in check, not allowing them to lie under the Western allies, which many of the mentioned politicians wanted with every fiber of their soul.

In early September, ours entered Bucharest, and on September 12, the Romanians signed up for the anti-Hitler coalition. To be honest, if it were not for the important strategic position of Romania, it would be possible to leave the king to his country. Deserved. But alas. At least everything was done without incident. And even the order "Victory" was given.

The war with Bulgaria is generally easy to describe. On September 3, Tolbukhin published an edict stating that the Red Army did not want to fight the brotherly Bulgarian people. On September 5, the USSR government declared war on Bulgaria. On September 8, ours entered the territory of Bulgaria, and the Bulgarians did not shoot at ours, but we had an order not to take away weapons from them. War, however. On the afternoon of September 9, the government changed in Bulgaria, and in the evening Stalin gave the order to stop hostilities against Bulgaria. In general, it would always be so.

Lyrical digression. An interesting correlation is observed: the more a certain people owes us, the more serious troubles they have passed because of Russian valor or condescension, the more painfully this people strives to kick the Russians in moments of our weakness. And vice versa. It seems that the Hungarians less than all the peoples of Eastern Europe bloom and smell about the "Soviet occupation."

But the Magyars fought for Hitler, as long as they could fight at all, and they bled our noses seriously, incomparably with all other allies of the Germans. And then in 1956, when they thought that they sensed weakness, they rebelled not like a child, without the "orange" Czechoslovak antics and jumps. Our people explained to them that it was not good to cut "epaulettes" on the shoulders of captured Soviet officers, and it was absolutely not necessary to seize the maternity hospital with officer wives. The technology of explanation, although far from NLP, deserves close study (maybe I'll write it as a thread).

8. Baltics. September October. In general, here the Germans prepared very well, created powerful defensive lines "Valga", "Cesis" and "Sigulda", covering Riga. If you look at the map, you can see that it was the capture of Riga that won this battle - the further cut off GA "North" could only think of capitulation. The Germans, however, foresaw this too, concentrating in Courland (north-west Latvia) all their remaining tank divisions in the amount of five pieces in order to equalize the Russian rates.

At first, ours conscientiously beat their foreheads against the German defenses, incurring unacceptable losses. It would seem that it is high time to hear a shout from the Kremlin: "Attack until you overwhelm them with corpses, otherwise liberal historians will be very offended in the future!" But alas. There was no shout, although the attacks continued so that the Germans would not relax and generally look in the right direction. Meanwhile, ours prepared a strike on Memel (the local nickname is Klaipeda), that is, they simply decided to increase the size of future ticks, and the transfer was carried out in such a way that the Germans slammed it - to be precise, they simply did not believe that it was possible to transfer it already during the operation direction of the main attack. When the attack on Memel began, the Germans themselves left Riga, planting in Courland in the amount of 33 divisions.

9. Yugoslavia (October) and Hungary (very long, although it started around the same time). Well, I'm not a big supporter of all these "Slavic brotherhoods" and "Orthodox peoples", but we to the Yugoslavs - more precisely, to the Serbs and Montenegrins - simply *must* and will be for a long time to come. For what? During the month that, in 1941, German tank divisions traveled around the Balkans, fucking Yugoslavia, where a coup took place, as a result of which Hitler was sent out, and a desire was expressed to negotiate with the Union. All the troubles of these peoples, very large even by the standards of that time, arose precisely from this event. And for this month, the Barbarossa plan has been postponed. So it goes.

In Yugoslavia there was porridge in the manner of Latin American troubles. The Germans, Ustashe, Chetniks, Tito - and both the Chetniks and Tito throughout the war played with both the USSR and Great Britain, despite the exile government of Yugoslavia, also sponsored by the British. The Russian security corps of White Guard origin was also sitting there, which slaughtered the communists and was on the payroll of the Germans, but did not particularly bully the Chetniks, and sometimes helped them. Plus, ours showed up there, accompanied by the Bulgarians, with whom the Serbs once fought in earnest ... But everything was done very quickly and cleanly, and in general, the Germans rather solved the problem of how to get their legs out of the Balkans, and not how to save them behind us, so that the pace of our advance was determined more by difficulties in supplying the stretched communications than by enemy resistance.

Hungary was basically a different matter. I don’t know whether they remembered how Nicholas I explained to them in 1848 why a revolution is not good, or whether they had a general national upsurge and an adrenaline rush ... It was great like Poland in 1920, when r-r-revolutionary The Red Army was unable to defeat the Poles, because the theories about the uprising of the oppressed classes could not withstand the collision with reality, no matter what Tukhachevsky wrote.

The Hungarian land admiral Horthy, like any politician, writhed for a long time, bargaining with all parties, and writhing to the point that he was thrown out of office in early October, or whatever it is called in Hungarian. Until their defeat, the Hungarians remained loyal and reliable allies of the Reich. I must say that the Germans did not have psychological problems that arise when you fight on native land- from the point of view of a cynic, a defensive battle on the territory of an ally by the psychological state fighter is generally close to ideal.

Hungary was Hitler's last foreign headquarters, and he spared no reserves. Ours, however, failed to create an adequate advantage in the operation of forces (infantry and tanks) and paid for it. In addition, the supply went only by road, due to the difference in track gauge railways. And the quality of the marching replenishment, recruited already on the territory of Ukraine and Moldova, left much to be desired. Plus, the whole assortment, such as perfectly organized German counter-offensives in January 1945, attempts to unblock the surrounded Budapest, powerful fortified areas (the Margarita line), the actual urban war with desperate resistance from the garrison, and so on. “They didn’t fight with the Papuans” (c), although, on the other hand, no one has yet canceled superiority in firepower, and the fifth column did not help much for those who fell under Russian art and air strikes. Our overseas friends very correctly remarked: "power is a firepower".

Of the special moments that I have not yet mentioned, first of all we must recall the Slovak uprising. It was not an idiotic cancan a la Warsaw, but a seriously prepared performance aimed at capturing and holding a vast territory (at the peak of about 20 thousand square kilometers), precisely with an eye on the USSR, and ours helped with what they could and could not, however, they simply didn’t have time to * gnaw through the Carpathians on time (the Slovaks requested help on August 31, and only on October 6 ours broke through the Dukla Pass), and the uprising was defeated. Actually, the materials on this speech with the words "this is how it is done" should be recommended to our Polish friends, when they begin to wonder why the Muscovites did not help, when the proud Poles with as many as three thousand pieces of light small arms began to break windows in a single city.

It was 1944, after all, so a happy ending was inevitable. The Hungarians were crushed, and with them the GA "South", although the decisive success was achieved only by mid-March 1945 and continued with the Vienna operation.

10. Far North. End of October-November. Ours entered the territory of Norway, depriving Germany of ice-free northern ports and sources of raw materials. And, of course, the threat to the Arctic convoys has sharply decreased. Nevertheless, IMHO, this is still a local strike, listed in the list only because another potentially sovereign country, Norway, was played in it.

Again, looking at the map, you can see that the strikes from the 6th to the 10th were connected by a common strategic plan, namely, a threat was organized in two directions, Germany's allies were put out of action, the northern flank was finally eaten up and used extremely low density of troops on the southern flank. Nevertheless, the law of stretching communications and increasing the density of troops on a shrinking front line objectively acted against us, which explained the considerable losses in the Baltic states and especially Hungary.

In conclusion, again, a great quote from Liddell Hart, for authority. The quote refers to the 1943 campaign and, IMHO, the author says in this case more at the operational level than at the strategic level.

"The nature and pace of Russian operations more and more resembled those of the Allies during their counter-offensive in the West in 1918, namely: delivering alternating strikes in various sectors of the front; a temporary cessation of the offensive in a certain direction, when its pace slowed down in the face of increased enemy resistance, and the transition to an offensive in another direction; coordination of the purpose of each strike to facilitate the next one; carrying out all strikes in close cooperation with each other, linking them in time and space. The actions of the Russians forced the German command, as in 1918, to hastily transfer their limited reserves to where they struck, and at the same time narrowed the ability to timely transfer reserves to threatened sectors of the front.As a result, the Germans lost their freedom of action, and the number of reserves they had was catastrophically reduced. Such a strategy of the Russians led to a general paralysis of the German military machine.

Russian methods of action are natural for any army with a general superiority in strength. The allied armies acted in the west in 1918 in exactly the same way as the Red Army in 1943. This method is especially suitable in a theater where line communications are not sufficiently developed and cannot provide the attacker with the ability to quickly transfer reserves from one sector of the front to another in order to develop success in a certain direction. Since this method provides for breaking through the front each time in a new direction, the losses of troops in this case will be higher than when breaking through the front and developing success in depth in only one direction. In addition, the success achieved by this method in each individual direction will be less decisive. However, the total effect of blows on all sectors of the front will be quite significant, provided that the side using this method has sufficient strength to withstand the stress for a long time.

As you can see, in the campaign of 1944 the same principle was applied at a higher level, and in combination with political factors (the transition from strategy proper to "grand strategy" according to the same Liddell Hart) guaranteed the defeat of Germany.

Russian superiority in strength was realized not so much in frontal pressure (live waves on machine guns, with which the liberals like to scare us), but in depriving the Germans of freedom of action, i.e. freedom to operate reserves. The Germans were simply not given time to figure out what kind of filth against us these reserves could be spent on (I recommend looking at the history of the Grossdeutchland division, which worked as a "fire brigade"). It is curious that the classic strategy - a breakthrough in a single sector and the development of success - for the Russian theater of operations would indeed be, let's say, less guaranteed, since the troops that broke through would have to deal with a counterattack by German maneuverable reserves over still vast spaces, and the Germans would fight have not forgotten how, and the outcome of such a highly maneuverable cut cannot be confidently predicted 1 . In addition, the very depth of such a single breakthrough in 1944, even under the most optimistic assumptions, did not give hope for deciding the outcome of the entire war.

It is interesting to mention L.-G. about "the close interaction [of Soviet strikes] with each other, linking them in time and space." I don’t recall sources apologetic or accusatory of Hitler that would even mention that he, with his desire to get into all cases, considered decisions on the scale of the entire front, without immediately slipping into a discussion of a single operation. This speaks of a much more effective organization of strategic planning on the Soviet side.

And finally, about losses. Indeed, the strategy of alternating strikes is more costly from this point of view, but, as mentioned above (and below), it *guaranteed* success for the conditions of our theater of operations and the balance of forces. A good illustration of the overall picture of the Soviet-European war is the gambler, adventurer Hitler and the cold, prudent manager Stalin. A lesson to remember, IMHO, although everyone draws their own conclusions here.

In general, in maneuverable clashes, a lot depends on "how the chip will fall," and the influence of random and fundamentally unaccounted for factors is the higher, the higher the connectivity of the territory on which the maneuvering war is waged, and the more diverse the opportunities provided by technology. An extreme example: the battle of Midway - the sea, aircraft carriers and an unthinkable chain of chances in favor of the Americans. In the conditions of the Russian theater of operations, however, the choice of such a direction of the only breakthrough that would guarantee a small variety of German opportunities to repel it automatically meant the same small variety of Russian opportunities to develop success, and the situation degenerated into a battle of attrition with German reserves, despite the fact that the superiority of the technical capabilities of the defense over the technical capabilities of the attack remained, and the protracted communications continued to work against the Russians who had broken through. That is, the canonical strategy of a single breakthrough of the front line either unacceptably increased the degree of unpredictability of the result, or led to a battle of attrition with huge losses.

Question 01. Using the map, tell us about the "ten Stalinist blows" in 1944.

Answer. Stalin blows.

1) The first blow in January 1944 was a strategic offensive operation to defeat the German group near Leningrad and Novgorod.

2) The second blow was delivered in February-March 1944, defeating the German Army Groups "South" and "A" on the Southern Bug River and throwing their remnants across the Dniester River.

3) As a result of the third strike, the Odessa and Crimean groups of the German army were defeated, the Crimean peninsula was liberated.

4) The fourth blow was carried out on the Karelian Isthmus and on the Svir-Petrozavodsk direction in June-July 1944.

5) In June-July 1944, Soviet troops defeated the German Army Group Center on Belarusian lands and destroyed 30 enemy divisions east of Minsk, the Byelorussian SSR, most of the Lithuanian SSR and a significant part of Poland were liberated.

6) The sixth blow was offensive operations in July-August 1944 in Western Ukraine, Soviet troops defeated the German group near Lvov and threw its remnants behind the San and Vistula rivers, a powerful bridgehead was formed west of the city of Sandomierz.

7) Offensive operations in August-September 1944 in the Chisinau-Iasi region became the seventh blow, as a result of which a large grouping of German-Romanian troops was defeated, the Moldavian SSR was liberated and Germany's allies, Romania, and then Bulgaria, were put out of action, the way was opened for Soviet troops to Hungary and the Balkans.

8) In September-October 1944, Soviet troops liberated the Estonian SSR, the Lithuanian SSR, most of the Latvian SSR, Finland was forced to break the alliance with Germany and subsequently declare war on it.

9) The ninth blow in October-December 1944 defeated the German army groups "South" and "F", cleared most of the territory of Hungary, Transcarpathian Ukraine, assisted in the liberation of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia and created the conditions for a subsequent strike on Austria and South Germany.

10) The tenth blow in October 1944 was the defeat of the 20th mountain German army in Northern Finland, as a result of which the Pechenga region was liberated and the threat to the port of Murmansk and the northern sea routes of the USSR was eliminated.

Question 02. What are the reasons for the foreign campaign of the Red Army?

Answer. Causes:

1) the USSR fulfilled the promises given to the allies;

2) I.V. Stalin was already thinking about the post-war redistribution of the world, expanding the sphere of influence of the USSR.

Question 03. Which of the battles of World War II do you consider the largest and most significant for victory? Why?

Answer. The Battle of Kursk can be recognized as the largest in the Second World War in terms of the number of forces and means involved. But the most significant was the Battle of Stalingrad, which was only slightly inferior to Kursk in scale. It was this victory that finally stopped Hitler's offensive operations, therefore it was the beginning of the end for the latter's regime.

Question 04. What were the main reasons for the victory of the USSR in the Great Patriotic war?

Answer. Causes:

1) the large territory and heroism of the Red Army did not allow the defeat of the USSR in the first months of the war;

2) the defense industry was quickly established in the USSR;

3) the soldiers of the Red Army showed unparalleled heroism throughout the war, even the final stages, when it was no longer a question of the survival of the USSR;

4) the commanders of the Red Army quickly learned from their mistakes, improving their skills;

5) the USSR was part of the anti-Hitler coalition;

6) large-scale deliveries were made in the USSR under the Lend-Lease program, including scarce aluminum, the necessary machine tools, weapons at the most critical moments when the Soviet defense industry did not reach the required level of production, etc.;

7) the Wehrmacht was not ready for the climate and especially the off-road conditions of the USSR;

8) the occupation regime turned the population against the Nazis and allowed a mass partisan movement to be organized in their rear;

9) the fascist command made a number of incorrect tactical and strategic decisions, especially with Hitler, whose decisions, at the beginning of the war, turned out to be reasonable, towards the end of the war, more and more bordered on insanity.

Question 05. When and by what agreements were the results of the war summed up? What are they?

Answer. General principles the post-war structure of the world was determined at the United Nations Conference, which opened on April 25, 1945 (it also created the UN). The post-war fate of Germany was decided at the Potsdam Conference from July 17 to August 2, 1945, and the fate of Japan - according to the San Francisco Treaty. The crimes of fascism were condemned at the Nuremberg trials.

Question 06. What is the price of Victory?

Answer. The war claimed the lives of almost 27 million people (including approximately 10 million soldiers and officers). 4 million partisans, underground workers, and civilians died in the enemy rear. Over 8.5 million people ended up in fascist captivity.

The term "ten strokes Soviet army”appeared after the offensive operations were carried out, in 1944 there was no talk of any “strike” yet, and the operations were planned and carried out based on the logic of events and general strategic plans for this year. For the first time, "ten blows" were personally listed by I.V. Stalin in the first part of his report "27th Anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution" dated November 6, 1944 at a solemn meeting of the Moscow Council of Working People's Deputies. The term "Stalin's ten blows" was brought to life not only and not so much by the personality cult of I.V. Stalin, but by a statement of the fact that these ten blows were inflicted by the army under the leadership of the Supreme Commander, then Marshal Soviet Union I. V. Stalin.