Russia’s Ministry of Defense (MoD) has for the first time published documents shedding light on the first days of the Great Patriotic War. The materials, available on the Telegram channel of Russia’s MoD, were released timed for the Day of Remembrance and Sorrow.
This date was established to commemorate the day when Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union 82 years ago, on June 22, 1941, marking the beginning of the Great Patriotic War.
For the invasion of the territory of the USSR, German command had assembled about 5 million soldiers and officers, around 4.4 thousand tanks and assault guns, 47.2 thousand guns and mortars, 4.4 thousand combat aircraft, and 192 warships.
Among the documents released by the MoD are instructions issued by People's Commissar of Defense, Marshal of the Soviet Union Semyon Timoshenko on the eve of the Nazi attack to the commanders of border districts. As per the archive documents, the commanders were to place troops on full combat readiness, mask positions, covertly occupy firing positions in border areas, organize blackouts for cities and military installations, and relocate aviation to field airfields.
Another released document is the historical journal of the Black Sea Fleet, detailing the attack on Sevastopol – the largest city in Crimea, a major Black Sea port. The Nazis had attempted an air raid on significant forces of the Black Sea Fleet in the bay of Sevastopol, according to the MoD, but the attack failed. Not a single vessel was damaged, with Nazi-dropped mines neutralized by Soviet minesweepers, while the enemy forces lost several aircraft.
Great Patriotic War of 1941-45. The Black Sea Fleet. Landing troops on a mission. 1942.
© Sputnik / Alexander Sokolenko
/ According to insights offered by another archive document, on June 23, 1941, pilots of the Black Sea Fleet’s long-range Ilyushin DB-3 bombers successfully hit targets at the Romanian port of Constanta. As a member of the Axis, Romania had joined Operation Barbarossa, providing equipment and oil to Nazi Germany.
Award sheets of those who participated in the raid feature the names of Senior Lieutenant Ilya Korneev, who had strategized the course for the Black Sea pilots to follow to reach the targets at the port, as well as Alexander Tolmachev. This pilot, who was later awarded the order of Hero of the Soviet Union, brought a downed plane out of a tailspin, taking over control from his mortally wounded captain.
Soviet general and Marshal of the Soviet Union Georgy Zhukov (centre) at the first Victory Parade, 24 June 1945
CC BY 4.0 / Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation / (cropped image)
An order from the chief of the General Staff of the Red Army, General Georgy Zhukov, to form special forces for night raids is also among the materials published by Russia’s MoD.
Battle groups would secretly approach the area where tank and motorized units of the Wehrmacht were located and simultaneously attack them from several sides, retreating to their home positions before dawn. Such tactics allowed significant damage to be inflicted on the fascist invaders with minimal losses.
Feats of valor displayed by units of the Soviet Union’s Red Army allowed it to thwart the enemy’s plan to destroy the main forces of the border military districts in the first week of the war.
Nazi' Germany's Genocide Plan
Also on the Day of Remembrance and Sorrow, the Russian Military Historical Society published in Russian for the first time the full version of Nazi Germany's plan to exterminate the population of the USSR. Dubbed the "Hunger Plan" (German: "der Hungerplan"; "der Backe-Plan"), it was part of a strategy to use famine against the population of the Soviet Union, occupied by the Nazis.
According to historian Yegor Yakovlev, the Nazi Hunger Plan was conceived as a program of genocide of the USSR's population.
“In addition to the well-known military plan – Operation Barbarossa - an economic plan was conceived to plunder the occupied Soviet territories. Ahead of the attack on the Soviet Union, the Third Reich was seriously dependent on food imports. The British naval blockade posed a threat to the food situation in Nazi Germany. Therefore, they were going to plunder the Soviet Union, taking out all the grain, while leaving from 20 to 30 million people to starve," Yegor Yakovlev, director of the Digital History Research Foundation, said.
Screenshot of Nazi Germany document showing Nazi Germany's 'Hunger Plan' (German: der Hungerplan), published on the Russian Federal portal History.RF.
© Photo : Russian Federal portal History.RF.
According to Yakovlev, the plan was discovered by the US among documents of the Wehrmacht High Command, and it subsequently surfaced at the Nuremberg trials. The document, posted on the portal "History.rf," is dated May 23, 1941. It had never been published in Russian.
According to Hitler's plan, German colonists were to gradually settle on occupied Soviet territories. The solution to the depopulation of conquered territories was proposed by Herbert Backe, a German politician who served as state secretary and minister in the Reich Ministry of Food and Agriculture. The directives he formulated suggested that after the Wehrmacht had seized the black soil territories, all the food from there would be redirected to supply the Wehrmacht and the Third Reich. As a result, the people populating the non-black earth region would be left to face starvation, with Moscow and Leningrad to be the first affected.
"We condemn these people to starvation not only because they are superfluous mouths, but also because the Velikorossi [tr. Great Russians], both under the tsar and under the Bolsheviks, have always been enemies of Germany and Europe," Yegor Yakovlev cited a translation of the document as saying.
"That is, the idea to starve Leningraders arose not as a result of the failure of the Barbarossa plan, but as a result of plans conceived before the invasion of the Soviet Union,” the historian said, adding:
"It was a genocide plan, because it is genocide that provides for the mass murder of people."