Generals of the Red Army in German captivity during the Great Patriotic War. Generals who died as soldiers

War is always a cruel test; it spares no one, even generals and marshals. Each commander during the fighting there are ups and downs, each has his own destiny. As one American president rightly pointed out, war is a dangerous place. The statistics of the deaths of high-ranking officers during the fighting of the Second World War is a clear confirmation of this.

If a lot has been written about the military fate and losses of the Red Army generals during the Great Patriotic War in recent years, then much less is known about their German counterparts who died on the Eastern Front. At least, the authors do not know books or articles published in Russian on the topic in the title. Therefore, we hope that our work will be useful for readers interested in the history of the Great Patriotic War.

Before proceeding directly to the narrative, it is necessary to make a small note. In the German army, the practice of posthumously conferring general ranks was widespread. We do not consider such cases and we will only talk about persons who had a general rank at the time of their death. So let's get started.

1941

The first German general killed on the Eastern Front was the commander of the 121st East Prussian Infantry Division, Major General Otto LANCELLE, who died on July 3, 1941, east of Kraslava.

In the Soviet military-historical literature, various information was given about the circumstances of the death of this general, including a version that Soviet partisans were involved in this episode. In fact, Lancelle became the victim of a rather typical case for an offensive operation. Here is an excerpt from the history of the 121st Infantry Division: When the main body of the 407th Infantry Regiment reached the forest area, General Lanzelle left his command post. Together with the division headquarters officer, Oberleutnant Steller, he went to the command post of the 407th regiment. Having reached the advanced units of the battalion advancing to the left of the road, the general did not pay attention that the right battalion fell behind ... the Red Army soldiers retreating in front of this battalion suddenly appeared from the rear. In the ensuing close combat, the general was killed ...».

On July 20, 1941, the acting commander of the 17th Panzer Division, Major General Karl von Weber (Karl Ritter von WEBER), died in a field hospital in the city of Krasny. He was wounded the day before during shelling by fragments of a Soviet shell in the Smolensk region.

On August 10, 1941, the first general of the SS troops died on the Soviet-German front - SS Gruppenführer and police lieutenant general, commander of the SS division "Policeman" Arthur Mulverstedt (Arthur MULVERSTEDT).

The division commander was at the forefront, during a breakthrough by parts of his division of the Luga defensive line. Here is how the death of the general is described on the pages of the divisional chronicle: “ Enemy fire paralyzed the attack, she was losing strength, she was threatened with a complete stop. The general immediately assessed the situation. He rose to resume promotion by example. "Forward, guys!" In such a situation, it doesn't matter who leads by example. The main thing is that one captivates the other, almost like a law of nature. A lieutenant can raise an arrow to attack, or a whole battalion can be a general. On the attack, forward! The general looked around and gave the order to the nearest machine-gun crew: “Cover us from the side of that spruce forest!” The machine gunner fired a long burst in the indicated direction, and General Mülverstedt moved forward again, into a small hollow overgrown with alder bushes. There he knelt down to get a better look around. His adjutant, Lieutenant Reimer, lay on the ground, changing the magazine in a submachine gun. A mortar crew changed positions nearby. The general jumped up, his command “Forward!” was heard again. At that moment, a shell explosion threw the general to the ground, fragments pierced his chest ...

A non-commissioned officer and three soldiers were taken toIljishe Proroge. There was organized a dressing station of the 2nd sanitary company under the leadership of the senior doctor, Dr. Ott. When the soldiers delivered their cargo, the only thing the doctors could do was to ascertain the death of the division commander».

According to some reports, the general's presence directly in the combat formations of the infantry was caused by the dissatisfaction of the higher command with the not very successful actions of the division.

A few days after Mulverstedt, on August 13, the explosion of a Soviet anti-tank mine marked the end of the career of the commander of the 31st Infantry Division, Major General Kurt Kalmukov (Kurt KALMUKOFF). He, along with his adjutant, was blown up in a car during a trip to the front line.

Colonel-General Eugen Ritter von SCHOBERT, commander of the 11th German field army, became the highest-ranking Wehrmacht officer to die on the Soviet-German front in 1941. He also had the fate of becoming the first German army commander to die in World War II.

On September 12, Schobert took off on a Fi156 liaison “fiziler-storch” from the 7th courier detachment (Kurierst. 7), led by pilot Captain Suvelak, to one of the divisional command posts. For some unknown reason, the plane landed before reaching its destination. It is possible that the car received combat damage on the way. The landing site for the "fiziler" (with serial number 5287) turned out to be a Soviet minefield near Dmitrievka, in the area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe Kakhovka-Antonovka road. The pilot and his senior passenger were killed.

It is curious that in Soviet times, a heroic story was written by t.s. based on this event. According to his story, a German general watched as his subordinates forced Soviet prisoners to clear a minefield. At the same time, it was announced to the prisoners that the general had lost his watch on this very field. One of the captured sailors who participated in the demining, with a freshly removed mine in his hands, approached the surprised Germans with a message that the clock had allegedly been found. And, approaching, blew himself up and enemies. However, it may be that the source of inspiration for the author of this work was completely different.

September 29, 1941 was wounded by Lieutenant General Rudolf Krantz (Rudolf KRANTZ), commander of the 454th Security Division. On October 22 of the same year, he died in a hospital in Dresden.

On October 28, 1941, on the Valki-Kovyagi road (Kharkov region), the car of Lieutenant General Erich BERNECKER, commander of the 124th artillery command, was blown up by an anti-tank mine. During the explosion, the artillery general was mortally wounded and died on the same day.

In the early morning of November 14, 1941, along with a mansion on 17 Dzerzhinsky Street in Kharkov, Lieutenant General Georg Braun, commander of the 68th Infantry Division, flew into the air. It was a radio-controlled landmine planted by miners from the operational-engineering group of Colonel I.G. Starinov in preparation for the evacuation of the city. Although by this time the enemy had more or less successfully learned how to deal with Soviet special equipment, in this case the German sappers blundered. Together with the general, two officers of the headquarters of the 68th division and “almost all the clerks” (or rather 4 non-commissioned officers and 6 privates) died under the rubble, as the entry in German documents says. In total, 13 people died during the explosion, and, in addition, the head of the intelligence department of the division, the translator and the sergeant major were seriously injured.

In retaliation, the Germans, without any trial, hung in front of the explosion site the first seven townspeople who came to hand, and by the evening of November 14, stunned by the explosions of radio-controlled landmines thundering all over Kharkov, they took hostages from among the local population. Of these, 50 people were shot on the same day, and another 1000 had to pay with their lives in the event of a repetition of sabotage.

The death of General of the Infantry Kurt von Briesen (Kurt von BRIESEN), commander of the 52nd Army Corps, opened the account for the losses of senior officers of the Wehrmacht from the actions of Soviet aviation. On November 20, 1941, at about noon, the general left for Malaya Kamyshevakha to set the task for his subordinate units to capture the city of Izyum. At that moment, a pair of Soviet aircraft appeared over the road. The pilots attacked very competently, planning with engines running at low gas. Fire on the target was opened from a height of no more than 50 meters. The Germans, who were sitting in the general's car, discovered the danger only by the roar of the engines that had re-started at full power and the whistle of flying bullets. Two officers accompanying the general managed to jump out of the car, one of them was wounded. The driver remained unharmed. But von Brisen received as many as twelve bullet wounds to the chest, from which he died on the spot.

Who was the author of this well-marked queue is unknown. It should be noted that according to the operational report of the headquarters of the Air Force of the South-Western Front, on November 20, our aviation, due to bad weather, acted in a limited way. Nevertheless, units of the Air Force of the 6th Army, operating just above the area where von Brisen died, reported on the destruction of five vehicles moving along the roads during the attack of the enemy troops.

Interestingly, the father of the deceased von Brisen, Alfred, was also a general and also found his death on the Eastern Front in 1914.

On December 8, 1941, the commander of the 295th Infantry Division, Lieutenant General Herbert GEITNER, was wounded near Artemovsk. The general was evacuated from the front line, but the wound turned out to be fatal, and he died on January 22, 1942 in a hospital in Germany.

Very unusual for the Wehrmacht "model 1941" was the death of Lieutenant General Conrad von Kohenhausen (Conrad COCHENHAUSEN), commander of the 134th Infantry Division. The general's division, together with the 45th Infantry Division, was surrounded by units of the Southwestern Front in the Yelets area. The Germans had to break through in winter conditions from the resulting "cauldron" to join with the rest of their army. Cohenhausen could not stand the nervous tension and on December 13, considering the situation hopeless, he shot himself.

Most likely, such a tragic outcome was predetermined by the general's character traits. Here is what he wrote about it: Already when I met Lieutenant General von Kochenhausen on September 30, 1941, he was very pessimistic about the general military situation on the Eastern Front". Of course, the environment is not a pleasant thing and the losses of the Germans were great. We do not know the exact losses of the 134th division, but its “neighbor”, the 45th infantry division, lost over a thousand people from December 5 to 17, including 233 killed and 232 missing. There were also great losses in the material part. Only light field howitzers by the 45th division were left during the retreat of 22 pieces. But, in the end, the Germans still managed to break through.

The remaining divisions of the Wehrmacht in the central sector of the Soviet-German front fell into similar situations more than once or twice. Losses were also very significant. But their divisional commanders of composure, nevertheless, did not lose. How can one not recall the folk wisdom - "all diseases are from nerves."

The penultimate general of the Wehrmacht, who died on the Eastern Front in 1941, was the commander of the 137th Infantry Division, Lieutenant General Friedrich Bergmann (Friedrich BERGMANN). The division lost its commander on December 21 during the Kaluga operation of the Western Front. In an attempt to prevent the mobile group of the 50th Soviet Army from reaching Kaluga, units of the 137th Division launched a series of counterattacks. General Bergman arrived at the command post of the 2nd Battalion of the 449th Infantry Regiment, located in the forest north of the village of Syavka (25 kilometers southeast of Kaluga). Trying to personally assess the situation on the battlefield, Bergman advanced along with the battalion reserve to the edge of the forest. Soviet tanks immediately opened fire on the Germans, supporting their infantry. One of the machine-gun bursts mortally wounded the general.

The last in 1941 (December 27) was killed in battle by the commander of the 1st SS Motorized Brigade, SS Brigadeführer and Major General of the SS troops Richard Hermann (Richard HERMANN). Here is how this episode is reflected in the combat log of the 2nd field army: “ 12/27/1941. From the very early morning, the enemy, with a strength of up to two reinforced rifle regiments, with artillery and 3-4 squadrons of cavalry, began an offensive to the south through Aleksandrovskoye and Trudy. By noon, he managed to advance to Vysokoe and break into the village. Major General of the SS troops German was killed there.».

Two more episodes should be mentioned that are directly related to the topic discussed in this article. A number of publications provide information about the death on October 9, 1941 on the Soviet-German front of the Veterinary General of the 38th Army Corps, Erich BARTSCH. However, Dr. Barch, who died from a mine explosion, had at the time of his death the title of Oberst Veterinarian, i.e. it has nothing to do with purely general losses.

In some sources, the commander of the 2nd SS Police Regiment, Hans Christian Schulze, is also considered the SS Brigadeführer and Police Major General. In fact, Schulze was a colonel both at the time of his wound near Gatchina on September 9, 1941, and at the time of his death on September 13.

So, let's sum up. In total, twelve generals of the Wehrmacht and the SS were killed on the Soviet-German front in 1941 (including the commander of the 295th Infantry Division, who died in 1942), and another general committed suicide.

German generals who died on the Soviet-German front in 1941

1942

In the new year 1942, the bloody battles, which eventually engulfed the entire Eastern Front, could not but give and as a result gave a steady increase in irretrievable losses among the top officers of the Wehrmacht.

True, the Wehrmacht generals suffered the first loss in the second year of the war on the Soviet-German front for a non-combat reason. On January 18, 1942, Lieutenant General Georg HEWELKE, commander of the 339th Infantry Division, died of a heart attack in Bryansk.

Fast forward now to the southernmost section of the Soviet-German front, to the Crimea. On the isthmus connecting the Kerch Peninsula with the rest of the Crimea, there are stubborn battles. All possible assistance to the ground forces of the Red Army is provided by warships of the Black Sea Fleet.

On the night of March 21, 1942, the battleship "Paris Commune" and the leader "Tashkent", maneuvering in the Feodosiya Gulf, fired on enemy troops in the area of ​​​​Vladislavovka and Novo-Mikhailovka. The battleship fired 131 main-caliber shells, the leader - 120. According to the chronicle of the 46th Infantry Division, the units located in Vladislavovka suffered serious losses. Among the seriously wounded was the division commander, Lieutenant General Kurt HIMER. In the hospital, his leg was amputated, but the German doctors failed to save the general's life. On April 4, 1942, he died in the military infirmary 2/610 in Simferopol.

On March 22, Soviet pilots achieved new success. During an air raid on a command post in the village of Mikhailovka, the commander of the 294th Infantry Division, Lieutenant General Otto GABCKE, was killed. Here is what Stefan Heinsel, the author of a book about the 294th division, said about this episode: “ The command post of the division was located in the school of the village of Mikhailovka. At 13.55 two so-called "rats"strafing dropped four bombs on the school. Together with General Gabke, Major Yarosh von Schwedler, two sergeants, one senior corporal and one corporal were killed". Interestingly, Major Yarosh von Schwedler, who died during the bombing, was the chief of staff of the neighboring 79th Infantry Division, temporarily assigned to the headquarters of the 294th.

On March 23, 1942, the head of the Einsatzgruppe A, the head of the order police and the security service of the Reichskommissariat Ostland, Walter STAHLECKER, completed his bloody path. If the biography of the SS Brigadeführer and Major General of the Police is known quite well, then the circumstances of his death are quite contradictory. The most plausible version is that the Brigadeführer was seriously wounded in battle with Soviet partisans, leading a detachment of Latvian policemen, and died while being transported to the rear hospital. But at the same time, the area indicated in all sources, without exception, in which a military clash with partisans took place - Krasnogvardeysk, looks very doubtful.

Krasnogvardeysk in March 1942 is the frontline zone of the 18th Army, which was besieging Leningrad, which occasionally fell under the shells of Soviet railway artillery. It is unlikely that in those conditions the partisans could conduct an open battle with the Germans. The chances of surviving for them in such a battle were close to zero. Most likely, Krasnogvardeysk is a more or less conditional point (like “Ryazan, which is near Moscow”), to which events are “tied”, but in reality everything happened much further from the front line. There is no clarity with the date of the battle in which Stahlecker was wounded. There is an assumption that it happened a little earlier on March 23.

In the introductory part of the article, the principle was declared - not to include officers who received the general rank posthumously in the list of losses. However, on sound reflection, we decided to make a few deviations from this principle. We will justify ourselves by the fact that the officers mentioned in these retreats were not only posthumously promoted to the rank of general, but, and this is the main thing, at the time of their death they occupied the general positions of divisional commanders.

The first exception would be Colonel Bruno Hippler, commander of the 329th Infantry Division.

So, the 329th Infantry Division, which was transferred to the Eastern Front from Germany in the last days of February 1942, took part in Operation Brückenschlag, the result of which was to be the deblockade of six divisions of the 16th Wehrmacht army surrounded in the Demyansk area.

At dusk on March 23, 1942, the division commander, Colonel Hippler, accompanied by an adjutant, rode out in a tank to conduct reconnaissance. After some time, the crew of the car radioed: “ The tank hit a mine. The Russians are already there. Rather for help b". After that, the connection was interrupted. Since the exact place was not indicated, the searches made the next day were unsuccessful. Only on March 25, a reinforced reconnaissance group found a blown up tank, the bodies of the division commander and his companions on one of the forest roads. Colonel Hippler, his adjutant and the crew of the tank, apparently died in close combat.

Another "fake" general, but who commanded a division, the Wehrmacht lost on March 31, 1942. True, this time Colonel Karl FISCHER, commander of the 267th Infantry Division, did not die from a Soviet bullet, but died of typhus.

On April 7, 1942, west of the village of Glushitsa, a well-aimed shot by a Soviet sniper marked the end of the career of Colonel Franz SCHEIDIES, commander of the 61st Infantry Division. Shaidies took command of the division only on March 27, leading the "team" of various units and subunits that repelled the attacks of the Red Army north of Chudov.

On April 14, 1942, the commander of the 31st Infantry Division, Major General Gerhard Berthold, died near the village of Korolevka. Apparently, the general personally led the attack of the 3rd battalion of the 17th infantry regiment on the Soviet positions near Zaitseva Gora on the Yukhnov-Roslavl highway.

On April 28, 1942, in the village of Parkkina, the commander of the 127th artillery command, Major General Friedrich Kammel, shot himself. This is the only German general who died in Northern Finland during the Great Patriotic War. The reason for his suicide is not known to us.

The beginning of the summer campaign of 1942 was marked, as the Germans like to write, by the "spectacular" success of the Soviet anti-aircraft gunners. As a result, the first general of the Luftwaffe died on the Soviet-German front.

So, in order. On May 12, 1942, a German Junkers-52 transport aircraft from the 300th transport group was shot down by Soviet anti-aircraft artillery near Kharkov. Sergeant Leopold Stefan, who survived and was captured, during interrogation said that there were four crew members, ten passengers and mail on board the aircraft. The car lost orientation and was hit. However, during the interrogation, the captured sergeant-major did not mention a very significant detail - there was a whole German general among the passengers. It was the commander of the 6th construction brigade of the Luftwaffe, Major General Walter Helling (Walter HELING). It should be noted that since Sergeant Stefan was able to escape, Heling could well become the first Wehrmacht general to be captured.

On July 12, 1942, the habit of using the advantages of flying on a communications plane ended badly for another Wehrmacht general. On this day, the Chief of Staff of the 4th Panzer Army, Major General Julius von Bernut (Julius von BERNUTH), flew to the headquarters of the 40th Panzer Corps in a fiziler-storch. It was assumed that the flight will take place over the territory, which is not controlled by Soviet troops. However, the Aist never arrived at its destination. Only on July 14, the search group of the 79th Infantry Division found a broken car, as well as the bodies of a general and a pilot, in the area of ​​​​the village of Safe. Apparently, the plane was hit by fire from the ground and made an emergency landing. The passenger and pilot were killed in the shootout.

During the summer campaign of 1942, heavy fighting took place not only on the southern flank of the huge Soviet-German front. The troops of the Western and Kalinin fronts tried to knock out of the hands of the Wehrmacht "a gun pointed to the heart of Russia" - the Rzhev-Vyazemsky ledge. The fighting on it quickly took on the character of bloody battles within the defense line, and therefore, these operations did not differ in fast and deep breakthroughs, leading to a violation of the enemy’s control system and, as a result, to losses among the highest command personnel. Therefore, among the losses of German generals in 1942, there was only one who died on the central sector of the front. This is the commander of the 129th Infantry Division, Lieutenant General Stephan Rittau (Stephan RITTAU).

Here is how the death of the division commander on August 22, 1942 is described in the divisional chronicle: “ At 10.00, the commander of the 129th Infantry Division, accompanied by an adjutant, set off on an all-terrain vehicle to the command post of the 427th Infantry Regiment, located in the forest between Tabakovo and Markovo. From there, the division commander intended to personally conduct a reconnaissance of the battlefield. However, after 15 minutes, a motorcycle liaison officer arrived at the command post of the division, who said that the division commander, Lieutenant General Rittau, his adjutant, Dr. Marschner and the driver were killed. Their all-terrain vehicle received a direct hit from an artillery shell on the southern exit from Martynovo».

On August 26, 1942, another Wehrmacht general added to the list of casualties, this time again on the southern flank of the Soviet-German front. On this day, the commander of the 23rd Panzer Division, Major General Erwin Mack (Erwin MACK), with a small task force, went to the forward units of the division, repelling the fierce attacks of the Soviet troops. Further events are reflected in the dry lines of the "Journal of Combat Operations" of the 23rd TD: " At 08.30, the division commander arrived at the command post of the 2nd battalion of the 128th motorized infantry regiment, located in the collective farm south of Urvan. He wanted to personally find out the situation at the Urvan bridgehead. Shortly after the discussion began, a mortar shell exploded among the participants. The division commander, commander of the 2nd battalion, Major von Unger, adjutant of the 128th regiment, Captain Count von Hagen, and Oberleutnant von Puttkamer, who accompanied the divisional commander, were mortally wounded. They died on the spot or on the way to the infirmary. The commander of the 128th regiment, Colonel Bachmann, miraculously survived, receiving only a slight wound.» .

On August 27, 1942, General of the Medical Service Dr. Walter Hanspach (Dr. Walter HANSPACH), Corps Doctor (Head of Medical Service) of the 14th Panzer Corps, was on the list of irretrievable losses. True, so far we have not found information on how and under what circumstances this German general died.

The authors, who grew up on Soviet military-patriotic literature and cinema, read and watched more than once how Soviet military intelligence officers penetrated behind enemy lines, set up an ambush, and then successfully destroyed a German general riding in a car. It would seem that such plots are just the fruit of the activity of a sophisticated writer's mind, but in the reality of the war there really were such episodes, although of course there were not many of them. During the battle for the Caucasus, it was in such an ambush that our soldiers managed to destroy the commander and chief of staff of the 198th Wehrmacht Infantry Division.

On September 6, 1942, at about noon, along the road leading northeast from the village of Klyuchevaya to Saratovskaya, an Opel car with a commander's flag on the hood was driving. The commander of the 198th Infantry Division, Lieutenant-General Albert BUCK, the chief of staff of the division, Major Buhl, and the driver were in the car. At the entrance to the bridge, the car slowed down. At that moment, explosions of two anti-tank grenades were heard. The general was killed on the spot, the major was thrown out of the car, and the heavily wounded driver turned the Opel into a ditch. The soldiers of the construction company working on the bridge heard explosions and shots, were able to quickly organize the pursuit of Soviet intelligence officers and were able to capture several of them. From the prisoners it became known that the reconnaissance and sabotage group consisted of servicemen of the reconnaissance and mortar companies of the 723rd rifle regiment. The scouts set up an ambush, taking advantage of the fact that the dense bush in this place approached the road itself.

On September 8, 1942, the list of losses of the Wehrmacht was replenished by the general of the medical service from the 40th tank corps, Dr. Scholl (Dr. SCHOLL). On September 23, 1942, Major General Ulrich SCHUTZE, commander of the 144th artillery command, was on the same lists. As in the case of Medical General Hanspach, we have not yet been able to find information under what circumstances these two generals died.

On October 5, 1942, the Wehrmacht command issued an official message stating: " On October 3, 1942, on the front line on the Don River, the commander of a tank corps, General of the Tank Forces, Baron Langermann und Erlenkapm, holder of the Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves, died. Colonel Nagy, commander of one of the Hungarian divisions, perished shoulder to shoulder with him. They fell in the battles for the freedom of Europe". The message was about the commander of the 24th Panzer Corps, General Willibald Langermann und Erlenkamp (Willibald Freiherr von LANGERMANN UND ERLENCAMP). The general came under fire from Soviet artillery while traveling to the front line near the Storozhevsky bridgehead on the Don.

In early October 1942, the German command decided to withdraw the 96th Infantry Division to the reserve of Army Group North. The division commander, Lieutenant General Baron Joachim von Schleinitz (Joachim von SCHLEINITZ), went to the corps command post to receive the appropriate orders. On the night of October 5, 1942, an accident occurred on the way back to the division. The division commander and Oberleutnant Koch accompanying him died in a car accident.

On November 19, 1942, the hurricane fire of the Soviet artillery heralded the beginning of the winter offensive of the Red Army and the imminent turning point in the course of the war. In relation to the topic of our article, it should be said that it was then that the first German generals appeared who were missing. The first of these was Major General Rudolf Moravetz (Rudolf MORAWETZ), head of the transit camp for prisoners of war No. 151. He went missing on November 23, 1942 near the Chir station and opened the list of losses of German generals during the winter campaign of 1942-1943.

On December 22, 1942, the commander of the 62nd Infantry Division, Major General Richard-Heinrich von Reuss, died in the area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe village of Bokovskaya. The general tried to slip through the columns of Soviet troops, rushing behind enemy lines after breaking through German positions during Operation Little Saturn.

It is noteworthy that the year 1942, which began with a heart attack in General Gevelke, ended in a heart attack in another German divisional commander. On December 22, 1942, Major General Viktor Koch (Viktor KOCH), commander of the 323rd Infantry Division, which was defending the Voronezh region, died. A number of sources claim that Koch was killed in action.

On December 29, 1942, Medical General Dr. Josef EBBERT, Corps Physician of the 29th Army Corps, committed suicide.

Thus, in 1942, the losses among the German generals amounted to 23 people. Of these, 16 people died in battle (including two colonels - division commanders who were posthumously awarded the rank of general: Hippler and Shaidies). Interestingly, the number of German generals killed in battle in 1942 was only slightly higher than in 1941. Although the duration of hostilities doubled.

The remaining irretrievable losses of the generals occurred for non-combat reasons: one person died as a result of an accident, two committed suicide, three died as a result of illness, one went missing.

German generals who died on the Soviet-German front in 1942

As we can see, in 1942, there were no prisoners among the German generals. But everything will change dramatically in just a month, at the end of January 1943, in Stalingrad.

1943

Undoubtedly, the most important event of the third year of the war was the surrender of the German 6th Field Army in Stalingrad and the surrender of its command, led by Field Marshal Paulus. But, besides them, in 1943, quite a few other senior German officers, who are little known to lovers of military history, fell under the “Russian steamroller”.

Although the generals of the Wehrmacht began to suffer losses in 1943 even before the final battle of Stalingrad, we will start with it, or rather, with a long list of captured senior officers of the 6th Army. For convenience, this list is presented in chronological order in the form of a table.

German generals taken prisoner in Stalingrad in January-February 1943

One note needs to be made about this table. The German bureaucracy seemed to be doing everything to make life as difficult as possible for future researchers and military historians. There are countless examples of this. Stalingrad was no exception in this regard. According to some reports, the commander of the 60th Motorized Division, Major General Hans-Adolf von Arenstorff, became a general in October 1943, i.e. already after six months spent in Soviet captivity. But that's not all. The rank of general was awarded to him on January 1, 1943 (the practice of assigning ranks “backdating” was not so rare among the Germans). So it turns out that in February 1943 we captured 22 German generals, and six months later there was one more of them!

The German group surrounded in Stalingrad lost its generals not only as prisoners. Several more senior officers died in the "cauldron" under various circumstances.

On January 26, south of the Tsaritsa River, the commander of the 71st Infantry Division, Lieutenant General Alexander von HARTMANN, died. According to some reports, the general deliberately sought his death - he climbed the railway embankment and began to shoot from a rifle in the direction of the positions occupied by Soviet troops.

On the same day, Lieutenant General Richard STEMPEL, commander of the 371st Infantry Division, died. On February 2nd, the commander of the 16th Panzer Division, Lieutenant General Gunter Angern, added to the list of irretrievable losses. Both generals committed suicide, not wanting to surrender.

Now, from the grandiose battle on the Volga, let us return to the chronological presentation of the events of the winter campaign of the third military year.

A uniform pest attacked the commanders of the 24th Tank Corps in January 1943, when parts of the corps came under attack from advancing Soviet formations during the Ostrogozh-Rossosh operation of the troops of the Voronezh Front.

On January 14, the commander of the corps, Lieutenant General Martin WANDEL, was killed at his command post in the Sotnitskaya area. The commander of the 387th Infantry Division, Lieutenant General Arno Jaar (Arno JAHR), took command of the corps. But on January 20 he suffered the fate of Wandel. According to some reports, General Yaar committed suicide, not wanting to be captured by the Soviets.

For one day only, on January 21, Lieutenant General Karl EIBL, commander of the 385th Infantry Division, commanded the 24th Panzer Corps. In the confusion of the retreat, the column in which his car was located stumbled upon the Italians. They mistook the allies for the Russians and opened fire. In a short-lived fight, it came to hand grenades. The fragments of one of them, the general was seriously wounded and died a few hours later from a large loss of blood. Thus, within one week, the 24th Panzer Corps lost its full-time commander and the commanders of both infantry divisions that were part of the formation.

The Voronezh-Kastornenskaya operation, carried out by the troops of the Voronezh and Bryansk fronts, completed the defeat of the southern flank of the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front.

The German 82nd Infantry Division fell under the first blow of the advancing Soviet troops. Its commander, Lieutenant General Alfred Bench (Alfred BAENTSCH), is listed as dead from wounds on January 27, 1943. The confusion that reigned in the German headquarters was such that on February 14 the general was still considered missing along with his chief of staff, Major Allmer. The division itself, commanded by the 2nd field army of the Wehrmacht, was classified as defeated.

Due to the rapid advance of the Soviet units to the Kastornoye railway junction, the headquarters of the 13th Army Corps was cut off from the rest of the troops of the 2nd German Army, and two of its divisions, in turn, from the headquarters of the corps. The corps headquarters decided to break through to the west. A different solution was chosen by the commander of the 377th Infantry Division, Lieutenant General Adolf Lechner. On January 29, while trying to break through in a southeast direction, to parts of his formation, he and most of the division headquarters went missing. Only the chief of staff of the division, Oberst Lieutenant Schmidt, went out to his own by mid-February, but he soon died of pneumonia in a hospital in the city of Oboyan.

Encircled German divisions began to attempt a breakthrough. On February 1, the 88th Infantry Division broke through to the outskirts of Stary Oskol. It was followed by units of the 323rd Infantry Division. The road was under constant fire from the Soviet troops, and on February 2, the division headquarters following the lead battalion was ambushed. The commander of the 323rd Infantry Division, General Andreas NEBAUER, and his chief of staff, Lieutenant Colonel Naudé, were killed.

Despite the fact that in the North Caucasus, Soviet troops failed to inflict the same crushing defeat on the German Army Group A as on the Volga and Don, the battles there were no less fierce. On the so-called "Line Hubertus" on February 11, 1943, the commander of the 46th Infantry Division, Major General Ernst Haccius (Ernst HACCIUS), died. It was chalked up to Soviet pilots, most likely attack aircraft (the division's chronicle says "attack from strafing flight"). Posthumously, the general was awarded the following rank and was given the Knight's Cross. Hazzius became the second commander of the 46th Infantry Division to be killed on the Eastern Front.

On February 18, 1943, the commander of the 12th Army Corps, Infantry General Walter GRAESSNER, was wounded in the central sector of the front. The general was sent to the rear, treated for a long time, but, in the end, he died on July 16, 1943 in a hospital in the city of Troppau.

On February 26, 1943, near Novomoskovsk, the “Fisiler Storch” disappeared, on board of which was the commander of the SS Panzer-Grenadier Division “Dead Head”, SS Obergruppenführer Theodor Eicke. One of the reconnaissance groups sent to search for Eicke found a downed plane and the corpse of an Obergruppenführer.

On April 2, an aircraft SH104 (factory 0026) from the Flugbereitschaft Luftflotte1 crashed in the Pillau area. The crash killed two crew members and two passengers on board. Among the latter was General Engineer Hans Fischer (Hans FISCHER) from the headquarters of the 1st Air Fleet.

On May 14, 1943, north of the Pechenegs, the commander of the 39th Infantry Division, Lieutenant General Ludwig LOEWENECK, died. According to some reports, the general was the victim of an ordinary traffic accident, according to others, he fell into a minefield.

On May 30, 1943, Soviet aviation dealt a powerful blow to the German defenses in the Kuban bridgehead. But according to our data, from 16.23 to 16.41 enemy positions were stormed and bombed by 18 groups of Il-2 attack aircraft and five groups of Petlyakovs. During the raid, one of the groups "hooked" the command post of the 97th Jaeger Division. The division commander, Lieutenant General Ernst Rupp (Ernst RUPP) died.

On June 26, 1943, the Germans suffered another loss in the Kuban bridgehead. In the first half of this day, the commander of the 50th Infantry Division, Lieutenant General Friedrich Schmidt (Friedrich SCHMIDT), headed for the position of one of the battalions of the 121st Infantry Regiment. On the way, his car ran into a mine near the village of Kurchanskaya. The general and his driver were killed.

In the Battle of Kursk, which began on July 5, 1943, the German generals did not suffer heavy losses. Although there were cases of wounding of division commanders, only one division commander died. On July 14, 1943, during a trip to the front line north of Belgorod, the commander of the 6th Panzer Division, Major General Walter von HUEHNERSDORF, was mortally wounded. He was seriously wounded in the head by a well-aimed shot from a Soviet sniper. Despite the hours-long operation in Kharkov, where the general was taken, he died on July 17.

The offensive of the troops of the Soviet fronts in the Oryol direction, which began on July 12, 1943, did not abound with deep breakthroughs, in which enemy headquarters fell under attack. But the losses in the generals, nevertheless, were. On July 16, the commander of the 211th Infantry Division, Lieutenant General Richard Mueller, died.

On July 20, 1943, the commander of the 17th Panzer Division, Lieutenant General Walter SCHILLING, died near Izyum. We failed to establish the details of the death of both generals.

On August 2, the commander of the 46th Panzer Corps, General of the Infantry Hans Zorn, died. Southwest of Krom, his car was bombed by Soviet aircraft.

On August 7, in the midst of our counter-offensive near Kharkov, the commander of the 19th Panzer Division, Lieutenant General Gustav SCHMIDT, familiar to everyone who watched the film "Arc of Fire" from the famous Soviet epic film "Liberation", died. True, in life everything was not as spectacular as in the movies. General Schmidt did not shoot himself in front of the commander of Army Group South, Erich von Manstein, and his staff officers. He died during the defeat of the column of the 19th division by tankers of the Soviet 1st tank army. The general was buried in the village of Berezovka by the crew members of the commander's tank, who survived and were captured by the Soviets.

On August 11, 1943, at about six o'clock in the morning Berlin time, Soviet snipers again distinguished themselves. A well-aimed bullet overtook the commander of the 4th Mountain Infantry Division, Lieutenant General Hermann KRESS. The general at that moment was in the trenches of the Romanian units blockading Myskhako - the legendary "Little Land" near Novorossiysk.

On August 13, 1943, Major General Karl Schuchardt, commander of the 10th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Brigade, died. Details of the death of the general - anti-aircraft gunner could not be found, but he definitely died in the band of the 2nd field army of the Wehrmacht. According to the documents of this association, on August 12, Shukhard reported to the army headquarters about the transfer of the brigade to operational subordination.

On August 15, 1943, Lieutenant General Heinrich RECKE, commander of the 161st Infantry Division, went missing. The general personally raised his soldiers in a counterattack in the area south of Krasnaya Polyana. The chronicle of the division contains information from eyewitnesses who allegedly saw how Soviet infantrymen surrounded the general. On this, his traces were lost. However, in the Soviet sources available to us there is no mention of the capture of General Rekke.

On August 26, in the area of ​​the Polish city of Ozarov, the commander of the 174th reserve division, Lieutenant General Kurt Renner, was killed. Renner was ambushed by Polish partisans. Together with the general, two officers and five privates were killed.

The 161st Division mentioned above was taken over by Major General Karl-Albrecht von Groddeck. But the division did not fight with the new commander for even two weeks. On August 28, von Groddeck was wounded by shrapnel from an aerial bomb. The wounded was evacuated to Poltava, then to the Reich. Despite the efforts of doctors, the general died on January 10, 1944 in Breslau.

On October 15, 1943, the offensive of the 65th Army of the Central Front began in the Loev direction. Powerful Soviet artillery fire disrupted the communication lines of the German troops defending in this area. Lieutenant General Hans KAMECKE, commander of the 137th Infantry Division, went to the command post of the 447th Infantry Regiment to personally orientate themselves in the situation that was developing during the large-scale Russian offensive that had begun. On the way back south of the village of Kolpen, the general's car was attacked by Soviet attack aircraft. Kameke and the communications officer accompanying him, Lieutenant Mayer, were seriously injured. The next morning, the general died in a field hospital. Interestingly, Lieutenant General Kameke was the second and last full-time commander of the 137th division in World War II. Recall that the first commander, Lieutenant General Friedrich Bergmann, was killed in December 1941 near Kaluga. And all the other officers who commanded divisions wore the prefix "acting" until December 9, 1943, the formation was finally disbanded.

On October 29, 1943, German troops fought stubborn battles in the Krivoy Rog region. During one of the counterattacks, the commander of the 14th Panzer Division, Lieutenant General Friedrich SIEBERG, and his chief of staff, Oberst Lieutenant von der Planitz, were wounded by fragments of an exploding shell. If Planict's wound was light, then the general was unlucky. Although he was rushed to Hospital No. 3/610 on a fiziler-storch plane, despite all the efforts of the doctors, Sieberg died on November 2.

On November 6, 1943, the commander of the 88th Infantry Division, Lieutenant General Heinrich Rott (Heinrich ROTH), died from a wound received the day before. His division at that time fought hard battles with Soviet troops who stormed the capital of Soviet Ukraine - Kyiv.

Major General Max Ilgen (Max ILGEN), commander of the 740th formation of the "eastern" troops, is listed as missing on November 15, 1943 in the Rovno region. As a result of a daring operation, the general was stolen from his own mansion in Rovno by the legendary Soviet intelligence officer Nikolai Ivanovich Kuznetsov, who acted under the name of Lieutenant Paul Siebert. Due to the impossibility of transporting the captured Ilgen to Soviet territory, after interrogation, he was killed in one of the surrounding farms.

On November 19, 1943, the aviation of the Black Sea Fleet and the 4th Air Army delivered the most powerful blow to the enemy's naval base since the beginning of the war. This base was the port of Kamysh-Burun on the Crimean coast of the Kerch Strait. From 10.10 to 16.50, six Petlyakovs and 95 attack aircraft worked at the base, the operations of which were provided by 105 fighters. Several fast landing barges were damaged as a result of the raid. But the losses of the enemy from our strike were not limited to this. It was on this day that Vice Admiral Gustav KIESERITZKY, commander of the German Navy on the Black Sea ("Admiral of the Black Sea"), decided to visit Kamysh-Burun and reward the BDB crews successfully blocking the Soviet bridgehead in the Eltigen area. At the entrance to the base, the car, in which, in addition to the admiral, his adjutant and driver, there were two more officers of the Navy, was attacked by four “silts”. Three, including Kieseritzki, died on the spot, two were seriously injured. According to A.Ya. Kuznetsov, the author of the book "The Big Landing", the enemy fleet on the Black Sea was beheaded by one of the four fours of the 7th Guards Assault Regiment of the 230th ShAD of the 4th Air Army. We also note that Kieseritzky became the first admiral of the Kriegsmarine to die on the Eastern Front.

On November 27, 1943, north of Krivoy Rog, the acting commander of the 9th Panzer Division, Colonel Johannes SCHULZ, died. He was posthumously promoted to the rank of major general.

On December 9, 1943, the combat career of Lieutenant General Arnold SZELINSKI, commander of the 376th Infantry Division, ended. We have not established the details of his death.

The third war year brought both quantitative and qualitative changes to the structure of the losses of the German generals on the Soviet-German front. In 1943, these losses amounted to 33 dead and 22 prisoners (all captured in Stalingrad).

Of the irretrievable losses, 24 people died in battle (counting Colonel Schultz, the division commander, who was awarded the general rank posthumously). It is noteworthy that if in 1941 and 1942 only one German general died from air strikes, then in 1943 - already as many as six!

In the remaining nine cases, the cause was: accidents - two people, suicides - three people, "friendly fire" - one person, two were missing, and another was killed after being captured in the German rear by partisans.

Note that among the losses for non-combat reasons, there are no deaths due to illnesses, and the reason for all three suicides was the unwillingness to be in Soviet captivity.

German generals who died on the Soviet-German front in 1943

– Geschichte der 121. ostpreussischen Infanterie-Division 1940-1945/Tradizionverband der Division – Muenster/Frankfurt/Berlin, 1970 – S. 24-25

We were unable to make an adequate reverse translation of the name of the mentioned settlement from German into Russian.

Husemann F. Die guten Glaubens waren - Osnabrueck - S. 53-54

US National Archives T-314 roll 1368 frame 1062

US National Archives T-314 roll 1368 frame 1096

Vokhmyanin V.K., Podoprigora A.I. Kharkov, 1941. Part 2: City on fire. - Kharkov, 2009 - P.115

TsAMO F. 229 Op. 161 items 160 “HQ of the Air Force of the South-Western Front. Operational summary to 04.00 21.11.1941.

Hartmann Ch. Wehrmacht im Ostkrieg - Oldenburg, 2010 - S. 371

Ibid.

Meyer - Detring W. Die 137. Infanterie - Division im Mittelabschnitt der Ostfront - Eggolsheim, o.J. – S.105-106

US National Archives T-312 roll 1654 frame 00579

For some reason, the wrong hull number is indicated - the 37th ak.

US National Archives T-311 roll 106 “Recorded losses of officers Gr. And "North" from October 1, 1941 to March 15, 1942 "

That is how, in the army, and not the rank of the SS troops, the rank of Schulze is indicated in the document.

US National Archives T-311 roll 108 "Losses of the 18th Army and 4th Panzer Group from June 22 to October 31, 1941"

Chronicle of the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union at the Black Sea Theater - Vol. 2 - M., 1946 - P.125

Scherzer V. 46. Infanterie-Division - Jena 2009 - S.367

It should be noted that the Germans could call any Soviet aircraft, and not just the I-16, "army"

Saenger H. Die 79. Infanterie– Division, 1939 – 1945 – o.O, o.J. – S. 58

Einsatzgruppen der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD is the special task force of the SD security service. On the territory of the USSR, the tasks of operational and special groups included: identifying and liquidating party and Komsomol activists, carrying out search activities and arrests, destroying Soviet party workers, NKVD employees, army political workers and officers, combating manifestations of anti-German activity, seizing institutions with file cabinets and archives, etc.

Colonel Hippler was introduced to the rank of major general on April 8, 1942.

Pape K. 329. Infanterie-Division - Jena 2007 - S.28

Colonel Fisher was promoted to the rank of major general on April 8, 1942.

Hinze R.: Bug - Moskwa - Beresina - Preußisch Oldendorf, 1992 - S.306

Spektakular - sensational, eye-catching

Ju-52 (serial number 5752, flight number NJ+CU) from KGrzbV300, piloted by non-commissioned officer Gerhard Otto.

Zablotsky A.N., Larintsev R.I. "Air bridges" of the Third Reich - M., 2013 - P.71

In German documents on this day, Fi156 from the 62nd communications detachment (manufacturer number 5196), the pilot Ober-sergeant major Erhard Zemke - BA-MA RL 2 III / 1182 S. 197, is considered lost from enemy influence. True, in some sources the name of the pilot is different - Linke.

Boucsein H. Halten or Sterben. Die hessische 129. ID in Russland und Ostpreussen 1941-1945 - Potsdam, 1999 - S.259

US National Archives T-315 roll791 frame00720

Graser G. Zwischen Kattegat und Kaukasus. Weg und Kaempfe der 198. Infanterie-Divivsion - Tubingen, 1961 - S. 184-185

Pohlman H. Die Geschichte der 96. Infanterie-Division 1939-1945 - Bad Nacheim, 1959 - S.171

Durchgangslager (Dulag) 151

Schafer R.-A. Die Mondschein – Division – Morsbach, 2005 – S. 133

US National Archives T-314 Roll357 Frame0269

Die 71.Infanterie-Division 1939 - 1945 - Eggolsheim, o.J. – S.296

US National Archives NARA T-314 roll 518 fram 0448

Scherzer V. 46.Infanterie - Division - Jena, 2009 - S.453

Zablotsky A., Larintsev R. Losses of German generals on the Soviet-German front in 1942. Arsenal-Collection. 2014, No. 5 - P.2

Military archive of Germany BA-MA RL 2 III/1188 S. 421-422

Time is Moscow

US National Archives NARA T-312 roll 723

US National Archives NARA T-314 roll 1219 fram 0532

Zamulin V.N. Forgotten battle on the Kursk Bulge - M., 2009 - S.584-585

Ibid - S.585-586

Braun J. Enzian und Edelweiss - Bad Nauheim, 1955 - S.44

Kippar G. Die Kampfgescheen der 161. (ostpr.) Infanterie – Division von der Aufstellund 1939 bis zum Ende – o.O., 1994 – S. 521, 523

Kippar G. Op.cit., S. 578

Zablotsky A., Larintsev R. "The Devil's Dozen" Losses of Wehrmacht generals on the Soviet-German front in 1941. "Arsenal-Collection". 2014, No. 3 - P.18

Meyer– Detring W. Die 137. Infanterie – Division im Mittelabschnitt dr Ostfront – Eggolsheim, o.J.– S. 186-187

Grams R. Die 14. Panzer-Division 1940 - 1945 -Bad Nauheim, 1957 -S. 131

Time is Moscow

Kuznetsov A.Ya. Big landing - M., 2011 - S. 257-258

The Second World War is considered one of the most violent and bloody armed conflicts of the 20th century. Of course, the victory in the war was the merit of the Soviet people, who, at the cost of countless sacrifices, gave the future generation a peaceful life. However, this became possible thanks to unsurpassed talent - the participants of the Second World War forged victory together with ordinary citizens of the USSR, demonstrating heroism and courage.

Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov

Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov is considered one of the most key figures of the Great Patriotic War. The beginning of Zhukov's military career dates back to 1916, when he took a direct part in the First World War. In one of the battles, Zhukov was seriously injured, was shell-shocked, but, despite this, he did not leave his post. For courage and valor he was awarded the St. George Crosses of the 3rd and 4th degrees.

WWII generals are not just military commanders, they are real innovators in their field. Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov is a prime example of this. It was he, the first of all representatives of the Red Army, who was awarded the insignia - the Marshal's Star, and was also awarded the highest service - Marshal of the Soviet Union.

Alexei Mikhailovich Vasilevsky

The list of "Generals of the Great Patriotic War" cannot be imagined without this outstanding person. Throughout the war, Vasilevsky was on the fronts for 22 months with his soldiers, and only 12 months in Moscow. The great commander personally commanded in the battles in the heroic Stalingrad, during the days of the defense of Moscow, he repeatedly visited the most dangerous territories in terms of the attack of the enemy German army.

Alexei Mikhailovich Vasilevsky, Major General of the Second World War, had a surprisingly courageous character. Thanks to his strategic thinking and lightning-fast understanding of the situation, he repeatedly managed to repel the onslaught of the enemy and avoid many casualties.

Konstantin Konstantinovich Rokossovsky

The rating "Outstanding Generals of the Second World War" will not be complete without mentioning an amazing person, a talented commander K.K. Rokossovsky. Rokossovsky's military career began at the age of 18, when he asked to join the Red Army, whose regiments passed through Warsaw.

There is a negative imprint in the biography of the great commander. So, in 1937, he was slandered and accused of having links with foreign intelligence, which served as the basis for his arrest. However, the persistence of Rokossovsky played a significant role. He did not confess to the charges imputed to him. The acquittal and release of Konstantin Konstantinovich took place in 1940.

For successful military operations near Moscow, as well as for the defense of Stalingrad, the name of Rokossovsky is in the forefront of the list of "great generals of the Second World War." For the role that the general played in the attack on Minsk and Baranovichi, Konstantin Konstantinovich was awarded the title of Marshal of the Soviet Union. Awarded with many orders and medals.

Ivan Stepanovich Konev

Do not forget that the list "Generals and Marshals of the Second World War" includes the name of Konev I.S. One of the key operations, which is indicative of the fate of Ivan Stepanovich, is the Korsun-Shevchenko offensive. This operation made it possible to surround a large grouping of enemy troops, which also played a positive role in turning the tide of the war.

Alexander Werth, a popular English journalist, wrote about this tactical offensive and Konev’s unique victory: “Konev carried out a lightning attack on enemy forces through slush, mud, impassability and muddy roads.” For innovative ideas, perseverance, valor and colossal courage, Ivan Stepanovich joined the list, which included the generals and marshals of the Second World War. The title of "Marshal of the Soviet Union" commander Konev received the third, after Zhukov and Vasilevsky.

Andrey Ivanovich Eremenko

One of the most famous personalities of the Great Patriotic War is Andrei Ivanovich Eremenko, who was born in the Markovka settlement in 1872. The military career of the outstanding commander began in 1913, when he was drafted into the Russian Imperial Army.

This person is interesting in that he received the title of Marshal of the Soviet Union for other merits than Rokossovsky, Zhukov, Vasilevsky and Konev. If the listed generals of the WWII armies were awarded orders for offensive operations, then Andrei Ivanovich received an honorary military rank for defense. Eremenko took an active part in operations near Stalingrad, in particular, he was one of the initiators of the counteroffensive, which resulted in the capture of a group of German soldiers in the amount of 330 thousand people.

Rodion Yakovlevich Malinovsky

Rodion Yakovlevich Malinovsky is considered one of the brightest commanders of the Great Patriotic War. He was enlisted in the Red Army at the age of 16. During the First World War, he received multiple severe wounds. Two fragments from the shells got stuck in the back, the third pierced through the leg. Despite this, after recovery, he was not commissioned, but continued to serve his homeland.

Special words deserve his military successes during the Second World War. In December 1941, being in the rank of lieutenant general, Malinovsky was appointed commander of the Southern Front. However, the most striking episode in the biography of Rodion Yakovlevich is the defense of Stalingrad. The 66th Army, under the strict leadership of Malinovsky, launched a counteroffensive not far from Stalingrad. Thanks to this, it was possible to defeat the 6th German army, which reduced the onslaught of the enemy on the city. After the end of the war, Rodion Yakovlevich was awarded the honorary title "Hero of the Soviet Union".

Semyon Konstantinovich Timoshenko

The victory, of course, was forged by the whole people, but the generals of the Second World War played a special role in the defeat of the German troops. The list of outstanding commanders is supplemented by the surname of Semyon Konstantinovich Timoshenko. The commander repeatedly received angry, which was due to failed operations in the early days of the war. Semyon Konstantinovich, having shown courage and bravery, asked the commander in chief to send him to the most dangerous area of ​​​​battles.

Marshal Timoshenko during his military activity commanded the most important fronts and directions, which were of a strategic nature. The most striking facts in the biography of the commander are the battles on the territory of Belarus, in particular the defense of Gomel and Mogilev.

Ivan Khristoforovich Chuikov

Ivan Khristoforovich was born into a peasant family in 1900. He decided to devote his life to the service of his homeland, to connect with military activities. He took a direct part in the Civil War, for which he was awarded two Orders of the Red Banner.

During the Second World War, he was the commander of the 64th and then the 62nd Army. Under his leadership, the most important defensive battles took place, which made it possible to defend Stalingrad. Ivan Khristoforovich Chuikov was awarded the title "Hero of the Soviet Union" for the liberation of Ukraine from the Nazi occupation.

The Great Patriotic War is the most important battle of the 20th century. Thanks to the valor, courage and courage of the Soviet soldiers, as well as the innovation and ability of commanders to make decisions in difficult situations, it was possible to achieve a crushing victory of the Red Army over Nazi Germany.

In the 1960s-1990s, domestic publications called different numbers of losses of Soviet generals and admirals in 1941-1945. In 1991-1994 an updated list was published in the Military Historical Journal containing 416 names of senior officers of the army and navy 1 ; military historian A.A. Shabaev wrote about 438 generals and admirals who died during the war 2 , and finally, I.I. Kuznetsov cited new data - 442 people 3 .

The study of military-historical literature, documents of the Russian State Military Archive (RGVA) and the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation (TsAMO RF) allowed the author to include in the list, in addition to 416, another 42 names of generals and admirals who died in 1941-1945. Taking into account the identified names, a more complete list of generals and admirals (458 people) was compiled and published, indicating the last name, first name, patronymic, rank, last position, date and circumstances of death 4 . It should be noted that in the military-historical and memoir literature other names of the dead generals are also mentioned. Since writers and memoirists sometimes give erroneous information about the time and circumstances of the death of a particular general, each name had to be checked against the documents of the RGVA and TsAMO RF, eliminating obvious errors and making the necessary clarifications.

Having established the total number of losses, it is necessary to consider them by periods of war and circumstances of death. According to the order of the Deputy People's Commissar of Defense dated February 4, 1944, the irretrievable losses include those who died in battle, went missing at the front, died from wounds on the battlefield and in medical institutions, died from diseases received at the front, or died at the front from other causes, captured. By their nature, losses are divided into combat and non-combat. Combat - these are those killed on the battlefield, who died from wounds at the stages of sanitary evacuation and in hospitals, who went missing in battle and were captured. Non-combat losses are those that are not directly related to the performance of a combat mission, including those in the troops engaged in combat operations: those who died due to careless handling of weapons, in accidents, catastrophes and as a result of other incidents, those who died of illness in medical institutions (at home), those who committed suicide, those who were shot by the verdict of military tribunals for various military and criminal offenses 5 .

In 1993 and 2001 A statistical study on the losses of the Soviet Armed Forces in the 20th century was published in two editions 6 . If in the first edition the figure was 421 generals, then in the second it was reduced to 416 people, although it should have been the other way around, since during the time that passed between the two editions, additional information about the generals who died in the war 7 was revealed, and the total number of losses should have increased. However, the authors of the statistical study, citing the figure of 416 people, stated that “this number did not include Colonel General A.D. Loktionov, G.M. Stern, Lieutenant General P.A. Alekseev, F.K. Arzhenukhin, I.I. Proskurov, E.S. Ptukhin, P.I. Pumpur, K.P. Pyadyshev, P.V. Rychagov, Ya.V. Smushkevich, major generals P.S. Volodin, M.M. Kayukov, A.A. Levin, who were repressed before the war and shot during the war years” 8 .

But, firstly, generals Volodin, Proskurov, Ptukhin and Pyadyshev were arrested not before the war, but at the beginning of the war, i.e. took part in it. Secondly, in my opinion, there is no reason to exclude from the list of non-combat losses the generals who died or died during the war under the pretext of their non-participation in hostilities. Therefore, in accordance with the mentioned order, it seems expedient to include in the list of irretrievable losses all generals and admirals whose lives were cut short in the period from June 22, 1941 to May 9, 1945. Of course, some of them will be included in the category of combat losses, others - non-combat.

The results of the calculation of the irretrievable losses of the Soviet senior officers are presented in Table. 1.

Table 1.

* Russia and the USSR in the wars of the twentieth century. Losses of the Armed Forces: A Statistical Study. M.: OLMA-PRESS, 2001. S. 432.

As you can see, major generals suffered the greatest losses - 372 people, i.e. more than 80 percent, 66 lieutenant generals (about 14 percent), colonel generals - 6 (1.3 percent), rear admirals - 7 (1.5 percent), the rest (marshals, army generals and vice admirals) - less than 1 percent.

It is natural that the greatest combat losses took place in 1941, when the Red Army retreated, entire armies were surrounded, hundreds of thousands of people were captured, including dozens of generals. If during the 46 months of the war 15 generals went missing, then more than 73 percent. this amount was in the first six months. Combat losses during this time (June 22 - December 31, 1941) amounted to 74 people, i.e. 12-13 generals died monthly (see Table 2).

Table 2.

Combat losses of senior officers in the Great Patriotic War

Already on the second day of the war, June 23, 1941, the Soviet generals suffered their first losses. During a German air raid on the command post, Major General I.P., assistant commander of the Western Front, was killed by a fragment of an air bomb. Mikhailin. Until the end of June 1941, division commanders Major General V.P. Puganov and D.P. Safonov, corps commanders S.M. Kondrusev, M.G. Khatskilevich, V.B. Borisov and other formation commanders. On July 8, the Messerschmitt fired at the car of the commander of the 13th Army, P.M. Filatov. The seriously wounded general was evacuated to a Moscow hospital, where he died. Lieutenant General Filatov became the first army commander to die in the Great Patriotic War.

The difficult situation of the retreat often forced the generals to mind other than their own business. There are cases when military leaders, instead of directing the battle from the command post, personally led the fighters into the attack and died on the battlefield. In conditions of encirclement, many of them found themselves under enemy fire and died like ordinary soldiers. An example is the death of the commander of the Southwestern Front, Colonel General M.P. Kirponos and chief of staff of the front, Major General V.I. Tupikov, who died in the Shumeikovo tract on September 20, 1941.

Dozens of commanders of divisions, corps, army commanders died. In the first year of the war, 4 generals, being surrounded and not wanting to surrender, shot themselves: the commander of the 33rd Army, Lieutenant General M.G. Efremov, Chief of Staff of the 57th Army, Major General A.F. Anisov, generals S.V. Verzin and P.S. Ivanov.

During the war years, over 70 Soviet generals were captured (the vast majority - in 1941-1942). Well-known generals in the army were captured: the former commander of the troops of the Ural Military District, Lieutenant General F.A. Ershakov, Head of the Department of the Academy of the General Staff of the Red Army, Lieutenant General of the Engineering Troops D.M. Karbyshev, several army commanders and dozens of corps and division commanders. The vast majority of the captured generals behaved with dignity, remained faithful to the oath. Only a few agreed to cooperate with the enemy. In total, 23 Soviet generals died in German captivity.

Several generals, finding themselves in the territory occupied by the enemy, continued to fight as part of partisan detachments. On December 10, 1941, the head of the Bakhchisaray partisan region, Major General D.I. Averkin, who previously commanded the 48th Cavalry Division. In June 1942, the commander of the partisan detachment, General N.V., died in hand-to-hand combat. Kornev (former chief of staff of the Air Force of the 20th Army of the Western Front). Commander of the 10th Panzer Division of the Southwestern Front, General S.Ya. Ogurtsov was captured in August 1941, and in April 1942 he escaped from captivity, fought in a partisan detachment and died in battle in October 1942.

Unfortunately, a number of losses are due to ordinary carelessness. So, on November 9, 1943, the commander of the 44th Army, Lieutenant General

V. A. Khomenko and the head of artillery of this army, Major General S. A. Bobkov, having lost their bearings, drove into the enemy’s position in a car and were shot at point-blank range 9 .

In the section of combat losses, the proportion of those who died in battle and died from wounds ranged from 77 to 90 percent. About 5 per cent. total losses (or about 8 percent of combat) were losses in captivity. 11 generals went missing in 1941 (about 15 percent of combat losses), in 1942 and 1943. two generals each (less than 1 percent). Out of 458 total casualties, combat losses for the entire period of the war amounted to 296 people (64.6 percent).

Thus, irretrievable losses among the Soviet generals amounted to 107 people in 1941, 100 in 1942, 94 in 1943, 108 in 1944, 49 in 1945; only 458 people.

An analysis of non-combat losses (see Table 3) shows that in 1941, out of 33 people, three died of illness, two shot themselves, one died in a crash, and 27 generals (almost 82 percent) were shot. In 1942, the share of repressed generals in the number of non-combat losses decreased to 56.8 percent. This is also a lot 10 . In 1943-1945. the picture has changed. The main part of non-combat losses were already those who died from diseases. And it wasn't always the elderly. Many of the dead generals (about 60 percent) were not even 50 years old. In addition, there were losses as a result of various accidents and accidents. So, the commander of the squadron of the Baltic Fleet, Vice Admiral V.P. Drozd died on January 29, 1943, while driving a car on the ice of the Gulf of Finland. The car fell into a hole, and the honored admiral died. Head of the Scientific and Technical Department of the Navy Engineer-Vice Admiral A.G. Orlov died in a plane crash on April 28, 1945. In 1944 and 1945, 15 people died in automobile and aviation accidents, and in total during the war years - 19 generals and admirals.

Non-combat losses of senior officers in the Great Patriotic War

Table4

Distribution of losses of senior officers by years and military ranks

Table 5

Distribution of losses of senior officers by position

The share of non-combat losses in 1941-1943 fluctuated within 27-30 percent, and in 1944-1945. - 36-39 percent. If at the beginning of the war there were many repressed generals, then at the end of it, the death rate from diseases increased, amounting to 85 percent in 1943, 75 percent in 1944, and 66.6 percent in 1945. non-combat losses of the corresponding year.

For 46 and a half months of the war, 458 people of the highest command personnel perished and died, i.e. about 10 people per month on average (see Table 4). But these losses were unevenly distributed over the years of the war. They were the highest in 1941 - 107 people in 6 months, i.e. about 18 people per month. IN

1942-1944 losses were halved (8 - 9 people per month). And in the last months of the war, January-May 1945, an increase in losses was again observed: 49 people in 4 months (12 per month). However, in 1945 this figure increased mainly due to the increased number of deaths from diseases and those killed in disasters.

The largest number of irretrievable losses of senior officers in the army and navy falls on the first year and a half of the war. So, the losses of 1941-1942. accounted for more than 45 percent. all the losses of generals and admirals during the war. In 1943, 94 generals (about 20 percent) died, two-thirds of this number were combat losses. In 1944, with the growth of general losses, there was a noticeable decrease in the number of combat losses of the generals, which was the result of an increase in the technical equipment of the army and an increase in combat skills and organizational abilities of command personnel. However, even then the losses continued to remain large. During the year, our army and navy lost 65 generals killed. The total losses of generals in 1944, taking into account those who died from diseases and died in accidents, amounted to 108 people.

In the last 4 months of the war (January-April 1945), an increase in combat losses was again observed - 31 generals (that's more than 7 people per month) 11 .

It is important to analyze what positions the fallen Soviet generals held and under what circumstances they died (see Table 5).

Thus, during the war years, 4 front commanders, 22 army commanders and 8 their deputies, 55 corps commanders and 21 deputy corps commanders, 127 division commanders and 8 brigade commanders died (died from wounds and diseases). If combat commanders died mainly on the battlefields (85 percent of all irretrievable losses), then the main causes of death of generals who served in the central apparatus of the People's Commissariat of Defense, in military schools, design bureaus, research institutes and other institutions located in the rear, were diseases (about 60 percent) and repressions (over 20 percent). Every third general of the central office of the NPO was repressed or died of illness, 16 percent. died in accidents and only 20 percent. - in the course of hostilities (during business trips to the fronts).

The losses of the senior officers of the Navy were relatively small - 17 people, of which 12 people were non-combat losses. During the entire period of the war, the Navy lost two vice admirals and seven rear admirals. Both vice admirals died in accidents. Four rear admirals died of disease, and one shot himself. Combat losses include three generals of naval aviation (F.G. Korobkov, N.A. Ostryakov, N.A. Tokarev) and two rear admirals (B.V. Khoroshkhin and N.I. Zuykov).

In total, during the war, 458 people died, died from wounds and diseases, went missing, died in captivity, in car and plane crashes, shot 458 people, or about 10 percent. the total number of generals and admirals who were in military service in the Armed Forces of the USSR during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945.

The combat losses of generals (who died in battle, in captivity, died from wounds, went missing, were blown up by mines and shot themselves to avoid capture) amounted to 64.6 percent, while 44.5 percent were lost in battles. (182 out of 458), 62 people died from wounds (13.5 percent) and 5 percent died in captivity. Non-combat losses reached 35.4 percent, of which 17.9 percent. (82 people) - died from diseases. The greatest monthly losses occurred in June-December 1941 and January-April 1945.

The irretrievable losses of generals and admirals by composition, types and branches of troops (services) were distributed in the following ratio: command staff - 88.9 percent, political - less than 2 percent, technical - 2.8 percent, administrative - 4.6 percent, medical - about 1 percent, legal - 0.65 percent. The distribution of generals' losses by type of the Armed Forces is shown in Table. 6.

Analyzing the above data, we can conclude that among the dead and missing senior officers, a large proportion falls on the command staff of the active army and navy, commanders of fronts and armies, their deputies and chiefs of staff of formations and formations, commanders of corps, divisions, brigades, and most of all - on division commanders.

Table 6

Losses of senior officers of the Ground Forces, Navy and Air Force

Table 7

Losses of generals and admirals of Nazi Germany

Compiled according to: Yakovlev B. New data on the casualties of the German armed forces in World War II // Voen.-historical. magazine. 1962. No. 12. S. 78.

Table 8

Losses of generals and admirals of Nazi Germany (by rank)

In this regard, it is interesting to compare the scale of the losses of the Soviet and German generals. The fact is that the Germans half a century ago summed up the losses of their generals and admirals. In 1957, a study by Voltmann and Müller-Witten on this topic was published in Berlin 12 . In the early 60s, in the works of L.A. Bezymensky 13 and B. Yakovlev, the figures from this book were used, including the published final table on the losses of the German generals.

As can be seen from Table. 7 and 8, the total losses of the German generals are twice the number of dead Soviet senior officers: 963 versus 458. Moreover, for certain categories of losses, the excess was much greater. So, for example, as a result of accidents of German generals on
two and a half times more died, 3.2 times more went missing, and eight times more died in captivity than the Soviet ones. Finally, 110 German generals committed suicide, which is 11 times (!) more than the Soviet ones. This testifies to the catastrophic drop in the morale of the Nazi generals at the end of the war. I believe these figures testify to the superiority of our generals over enemy generals, to the higher level of Soviet military art, especially at the final stage of the war.

NOTES

1 Military history magazine. 1991. No. 9-12; 1992. No. 6-12; 1993. No. 1-12; 1994. No. 1-6.

2 Shabaev A.A. Losses of officers of the Red Army in the Great Patriotic War // Military Historical Archive. 1998. No. 3. S. 180.

3 Kuznetsov I.I. Generals' fates. The highest command personnel of the Red Army in 1940-1953. Irkutsk: Publishing House of Irkutsk University, 2000. S. 182.

4 Pechenkin A.A. The highest command staff of the Red Army during the Second World War. M.: Prometheus, 2002. S. 247-275.

5 Russia and the USSR in the wars of the twentieth century. Losses of the Armed Forces: A Statistical Study. M.: OLMA-PRESS, 2001. S. 8.

6 The classification was removed: Losses of the Armed Forces of the USSR in wars, hostilities and military conflicts: Statistical study / V.M. Andronikov, P.D. Burikov, V.V. Gurkin and others; Under total ed. G.F. Krivosheev. Moscow: Military Publishing House, 1993, p. 321; Russia and the USSR in the wars of the twentieth century ... S. 430.

7 They gave their lives for their Motherland // Voen.-histor. magazine. 2000. No. 5. S. 24-28; Kuznetsov I.I. Decree. op. S. 182; Shabaev A.A. Decree. op. S. 180.

8 Russia and the USSR in the wars of the twentieth century ... S. 432.

9 Kuznetsov I.I. Decree. op. S. 68.

10 If out of 72 captured generals in the Nazi camps, every third died, then out of a hundred generals arrested by the NKVD, almost two-thirds died - 63 generals, of which 47 were shot, and 16 died in prison in 1942-1953. Calculated by the author.

11 The dynamics of losses among Wehrmacht generals was quite different: in 1941-1942. only a few German generals died, and in 1943-1945. 553 Nazi generals and admirals were captured; the overwhelming majority of the irretrievable losses of the senior officers of the "Third Reich" fell on the same years.

12 Folttmann J., Moller-Witten H. Opfergang der Generale. Die Verluste der Generale und Admirale und der im gleichen Dienstgrad stehenden sonstigen Offiziere und Beamten im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Berlin, 1957.

13 Bezymensky L.A. German generals - with and without Hitler. M., 1964. S. 399-400.

On October 28, 1941, when war was raging throughout the country, a train arrived at the railway station in the village of Barysh. The train was hastily driven into a dead end and surrounded by a cordon of NKVD officers. Some time later, muffled shots were heard in the ravine near the station. This is how they dealt with the military and economic-political elite of the Soviet Union.

The case of the aviators

This page in the history of the Ulyanovsk region has not yet been completed. In the meantime, we will tell you about what is known about the execution in Barysh right now ...

Shortly before the attack of fascist Germany on the Soviet borders, another purge began in the ranks of the Red Army. With special zeal to seek out "enemies of the people," the internal organs began in the air force (hereinafter referred to as the Air Force, - ed.), because our aircraft were seriously inferior to the German ones. Stalin personally instructed Lavrenty Beria, the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs, to supervise the Soviet aircraft industry. However, he was unable to remedy the situation. But, in order not to fall out of favor, Beria ordered his department to identify "enemies of the people" among the top chiefs of the Air Force. They added fuel to the fire of the defeat of our aviation in the first months of the war, and then the denunciations of envious people were not long in coming - the positions of the arrested were the highest. This is how the "military-fascist conspiracy in the Air Force" was fabricated - another bloody page in the book of the extermination of the Soviet military elite.

On suspicion of espionage, 20 people are arrested one by one. In October 1941, all of them were sent straight from prisons by train to Kuibyshev, where, according to the plan, if Moscow was taken by the Germans, the entire Soviet government and various departments were to be evacuated. But one of the wagons of the train did not arrive at its destination. Just in our region, near the Barysh station, he was overtaken by an urgent telegram from Beria: to stop the investigation immediately, to shoot all twenty without trial or investigation. The sentence was carried out on the spot...

Of the two dozen prisoners shot in Barysh (whose remains have not been interred to this day, moreover, the exact place of their burial is not known) - four Heroes of the Soviet Union, two colonel generals, four lieutenant generals, four major generals, heads of people's commissariats, world-famous aviators and designers. The color of the air force, the aviation elite, the best of the best. First, they were tortured in prison dungeons, then brutally finished off already on the road, and, finally, they were thrown with earth in a dusty quarry near the village station ...

aborted flight

Among those shot was Grigory Mikhailovich Stern, Colonel-General, Chief of Staff of the Far Eastern Front. The famous hero of the fighting on Lake Khasan and on the Khalkhin Gol River in 1938, adjutant of Klim Voroshilov himself, and before his arrest, head of the Main Directorate of Air Defense of the People's Commissariat of Defense. A brilliant career built by exemplary courage and bravery!

During the investigation, Hero of the Soviet Union Stern will be reminded of his criticism of the report of Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov shortly before his arrest. Unheard of: a colonel-general dared to speak out, albeit on the merits, but in whose address?! Former merits were forgotten at once. And later, one of the investigators will write down in his testimony: “... they acted especially brutally with Stern. There was no place left on it. During each interrogation, he lost consciousness several times.”

The day after Stern's arrest, on June 8, 1941, Yakov Vladimirovich Smushkevich, an aviation lieutenant general, one of the few in the country who was twice awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union, was arrested. The commander of the aviation group in the battles on the Khalkhin-Gol River in 1939, the head of the Red Army Air Force, and before his arrest, the assistant chief of the General Staff for Aviation, three days before his arrest, underwent a difficult operation. They took the lieutenant general straight from the hospital, and then during interrogations, the exhausted man was beaten on fresh bandages, on wounds obtained in battles for his homeland.

All those arrested were interrogated with prejudice: 19 of them confessed to sabotage under torture. Except for one - Alexander Dmitrievich Loktionov. The colonel general, commander of the Red Army Air Force, deputy people's commissar of defense for aviation, and since 1940 commander of the troops of the Baltic Special Military District, were interrogated in three. But the investigators failed to get a confession in a non-existent conspiracy with the Nazis: “Loktionov roared in pain, rolled on the floor, but did not agree ...”. He was a hero in the sky, he remained a hero in the dungeons.

The list of the executed also includes Lieutenant General of Aviation, Hero of the Soviet Union Pavel Vasilyevich Rychagov. His lightning-fast career was envied by many: at the age of 29, to head the Main Directorate of the Red Army Air Force, and after a couple of years to rise to the rank of Deputy People's Commissar of Defense! Many people wanted to take Rychagov's place, but honor and valor are not given out in the workplace ... A day after Rychagov's arrest, his wife Maria Nesterenko, deputy commander of a special purpose regiment, was also arrested. Shortly before her arrest, Maria Nesterenko made a world record for long-distance flights, several kilometers short of her destination. The plane iced over and Major Nesterenko was forced to land the car, but the world record had already been broken. Beria remembered the wife of the deposed lieutenant general those kilometers of "undershoot", without even taking into account the record itself. Maria Nesterenko was executed along with her husband. On the morning of the execution, they continued to beat her in the train car, extorting evidence, although the sentence had already been received.

Among those executed was the former First Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of Kazakhstan, and before his arrest, the Chief State Arbiter of the USSR Filipp Isaevich Goloshchekin. A man of amazing fate: he was one of those who, on the night of July 17, 1918, shot the royal family in the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg, and after the revolution he restored the economy of the Samara region.

Here are just a few of the most vivid and complete biographies to date of those who were shot point-blank in the Barysh ravine. Among them was Lieutenant General of Aviation Fyodor Konstantinovich Arzhenukhin, head of the Military Academy of Command and Navigators of the Air Force, Lieutenant General of Aviation Ivan Iosifovich Proskurov, head of the Intelligence Directorate of the Red Army, Hero of the Soviet Union, and Yakov Grigoryevich Taubin, weapons designer, creator of the world's first automatic grenade launcher. Together with their husbands, the wives of Major General of Artillery G.K. Savchenko - A.I. Fibich and Deputy People's Commissar of Trade D.A. Rozov - Z.P. Egorov.

That night, Major Generals of Aviation I.F. Sakrier and P.S. Volodin, Major General of the Technical Troops M.M. Kayukov, artillery colonels S.O. Sklizkov and I.I. Zasosov, the head of the experimental design bureau of the People's Commissariat of Armaments M.N. Sobornov and the first secretary of the Omsk regional committee D.A. Bulatov were killed in the Barysh ravine.

All of them were rehabilitated posthumously.

Evgeny SHURMELEV, Ekaterina POZDNYAKOVA

P.S. This shooting at the Baryshskaya railway station until recently was classified as "Top Secret". Little is known about this story today, even the exact reason for such a rush to be shot is not clear. According to one version, the country's leadership expected the capture of the Volga region by the Nazis, and therefore feared that the "enemies of the people", besides the aces of the aviation command, would render all possible assistance to the enemy. The exact place of execution is not known, but it can be assumed that because of the haste, they did not take the doomed into the depths of the forest, and therefore the place of execution was chosen a quarry near the station. There are still steep slopes around the ravine, so it was almost impossible for people exhausted and mutilated by torture and interrogation to escape.

There are many mysteries in this tragedy. So far, only the power of this brutal extermination of the real heroes of their country is obvious, to which, to this day, a foreign land, without a single mark of that terrible October day, has not become fluff.

During World War II, 5,740,000 Soviet prisoners of war passed through the crucible of German captivity. Moreover, only about 1 million were in concentration camps by the end of the war. In the German lists of the dead, there was a figure of about 2 million. Of the remaining number, 818,000 collaborated with the Germans, 473,000 were destroyed in camps in Germany and Poland, 273,000 died and about half a million were destroyed on the way, 67,000 soldiers and officers escaped. According to statistics, two out of three Soviet prisoners of war died in German captivity. The first year of the war was especially terrible in this respect. Of the 3.3 million Soviet prisoners of war captured by the Germans during the first six months of the war, by January 1942, about 2 million people had died or were destroyed. The mass extermination of Soviet prisoners of war surpassed even the pace of reprisals against representatives of Jewish nationality during the peak of the anti-Semitic campaign in Germany.

Surprisingly, the architect of the genocide was not a member of the SS or even a representative of the Nazi Party, but only an elderly general who had been in military service since 1905. This is General of the Infantry Hermann Reinecke, who headed the department for the loss of prisoners of war in the German army. Even before the start of Operation Barbarossa, Reinecke made a proposal to isolate Jewish prisoners of war and transfer them to the SS for "special processing". Later, as a judge of the "People's Court", he sentenced hundreds of German Jews to the gallows.

83 (according to other sources - 72) generals of the Red Army were captured by the Germans, mainly in 1941-1942. Among the prisoners of war were several army commanders, dozens of corps and division commanders. The vast majority of them remained true to their oath, and only a few agreed to cooperate with the enemy. Of these, 26 (23) people died for various reasons: they were shot, killed by camp guards, died of diseases. The rest after the Victory were deported to the Soviet Union. Of the last 32 people were repressed (7 were hanged in the Vlasov case, 17 were shot on the basis of the order of the Headquarters No. 270 of August 16, 1941 “On cases of cowardice and surrender and measures to suppress such actions”) and for “wrong” behavior in captivity 8 generals were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment. The remaining 25 people, after more than a six-month check, were acquitted, but then gradually transferred to the reserve.

Many fates of those Soviet generals who ended up in German captivity are still unknown. Here are just a few examples.

Today, the fate of Major General Bogdanov, who commanded the 48th Infantry Division, which was destroyed in the first days of the war as a result of the advance of the Germans from the border to Riga, remains a mystery. In captivity, Bogdanov joined the Gil-Rodinov brigade, which was formed by the Germans from representatives of Eastern European nationalities to carry out the tasks of the anti-partisan struggle. Lieutenant Colonel Gil-Rodinov himself was the chief of staff of the 29th Infantry Division before his capture. Bogdanov also took the post of head of counterintelligence. In August 1943, the brigade killed all German officers and went over to the side of the partisans. Gil-Rodinov was later killed while fighting on the side of the Soviet troops. The fate of Bogdanov, who went over to the side of the partisans, is unknown.

Major General Dobrozerdov led the 7th Rifle Corps, which in August 1941 was tasked with stopping the advance of the German 1st Panzer Group into the Zhytomyr region. The corps' counterattack failed, partly contributing to the German encirclement of the Southwestern Front near Kiev. Dobrozerdov survived and was soon appointed chief of staff of the 37th Army. This was the period when, on the left bank of the Dnieper, the Soviet command was regrouping the disparate forces of the Southwestern Front. In this mess and confusion, Dobrozerdov was captured. The 37th Army itself was disbanded at the end of September, and then re-created under the command of Lopatin for the defense of Rostov. Dobrozerdov withstood all the horrors of captivity and returned to his homeland after the war. His further fate is unknown.

Lieutenant General Yershakov was, in the fullest sense, one of those who were lucky enough to survive Stalin's repressions. In the summer of 1938, at the height of the purges, he became commander of the Urals Military District. In the first days of the war, the district was transformed into the 22nd Army, which became one of the three armies sent to the very thick of battles - to the Western Front. In early July, the 22nd Army was unable to stop the advance of the German 3rd Panzer Group towards Vitebsk and was completely destroyed in August. However, Ershakov managed to escape. In September 1941, he took command of the 20th Army, which was defeated in the Battle of Smolensk. At the same time, under unknown circumstances, Ershakov himself was captured. He returned from captivity, but his fate is unknown.

The fate of Major General Mishutin is full of secrets and mysteries. He was born in 1900, took part in the battles at Khalkhin Gol, and by the beginning of the Great Patriotic War he commanded a rifle division in Belarus. In the same place, he disappeared without a trace in the hostilities (a fate shared by thousands of Soviet soldiers). In 1954, former allies informed Moscow that Mishutin held a high position in one of the intelligence services of the West and worked in Frankfurt. According to the version presented, the general first joined Vlasov, and in the last days of the war he was recruited by General Patch, commander of the American 7th Army, and became a Western agent. More realistic seems to be another story told by the Russian writer Tamaev, according to which the NKVD officer investigating the fate of General Mishutin proved that Mishutin was shot by the Germans for refusing to cooperate, and his name was used by a completely different person who recruited prisoners of war into the Vlasov army. At the same time, the documents on the Vlasov movement do not contain any information about Mishutin, and the Soviet authorities, through their agents among prisoners of war, from interrogations of Vlasov and his accomplices after the war, would undoubtedly establish the real fate of General Mishutin. In addition, if Mishutin died as a hero, then it is not clear why there is no information about him in Soviet publications on the history of Khalkhin Gol. From all of the above, it follows that the fate of this man is still a mystery.

Lieutenant General Muzychenko at the beginning of the war commanded the 6th Army of the Southwestern Front. The army included two huge mechanized corps, on which the Soviet command had high hopes (they, unfortunately, did not come true). The 6th Army managed to put up stubborn resistance to the enemy during the defense of Lvov. Subsequently, the 6th Army fought in the area of ​​​​the cities of Brody and Berdichev, where, as a result of poorly coordinated actions and the lack of air support, it was defeated. On July 25, the 6th Army was transferred to the Southern Front and destroyed in the Uman pocket. At the same time, General Muzychenko was also captured. He went through captivity, but was not reinstated. It should be noted that Stalin's attitude towards the generals who fought on the Southern Front and were captured there was tougher than towards the generals captured on other fronts.

Major General Ogurtsov commanded the 10th Panzer Division, which was part of the 15th Mechanized Corps of the Southwestern Front. The defeat of the division as part of the "Volsky group" south of Kyiv decided the fate of this city. Ogurtsov was captured, but he managed to escape while being transported from Zamostye to Hammelsburg. He joined a group of partisans in Poland, led by Manzhevidze. On October 28, 1942, he died in battle in Poland.

Major General of the Tank Troops Potapov was one of five army commanders captured by the Germans during the war. Potapov distinguished himself in the battles at Khalkhin Gol, where he commanded the Southern Group. At the beginning of the war, he commanded the 5th Army of the Southwestern Front. This association fought, perhaps, better than others until Stalin decided to transfer the "center of attention" to Kyiv. On September 20, 1941, during the fierce battles near Poltava, Potapov was captured. There is information that Hitler himself talked to Potapov, trying to convince him to go over to the side of the Germans, but the Soviet general flatly refused. After his release, Potapov was awarded the Order of Lenin, and later promoted to the rank of Colonel General. Then he was appointed to the post of first deputy commander of the Odessa and Carpathian military districts. His obituary was signed by all the representatives of the high command, which included several marshals. The obituary, of course, said nothing about his capture and stay in German camps.

The last general (and one of two Air Force generals) captured by the Germans was Major General of Aviation Polbin, commander of the 6th Guards Bomber Corps, which supported the activities of the 6th Army, which surrounded Breslau in February 1945. He was wounded, captured and killed. Only later did the Germans establish the identity of this man. His fate was quite typical of all those who were captured in the last months of the war.

Division commissar Rykov was one of two high-ranking commissars captured by the Germans. The second person of the same rank captured by the Germans was the commissar of the brigade Zhilenkov, who managed to hide his identity and who later joined the Vlasov movement. Rykov joined the Red Army in 1928 and by the start of the war he was a military district commissar. In July 1941, he was appointed one of two commissars attached to the Southwestern Front. The second was Burmistenko, a representative of the Communist Party of Ukraine. During a breakthrough from the Kyiv pocket, Burmistenko, and with him the front commander Kirponos and the chief of staff Tupikov were killed, and Rykov was wounded and taken prisoner. Hitler's order called for the immediate destruction of all captured commissars, even if it meant eliminating "important sources of information". Therefore, the Germans tortured Rykov to death.

Major General Susoev, commander of the 36th Rifle Corps, was captured by the Germans dressed as an ordinary soldier. He managed to escape, after which he joined an armed gang of Ukrainian nationalists, and then went over to the side of the pro-Soviet Ukrainian partisans, led by the famous Fedorov. He refused to return to Moscow, preferring to stay with the partisans. After the liberation of Ukraine, Susoev returned to Moscow, where he was rehabilitated.

Aviation Major General Thor, who commanded the 62nd Air Division, was a first-class military pilot. In September 1941, as commander of a long-range aviation division, he was shot down and wounded while conducting a ground battle. He went through many German camps, actively participated in the resistance movement of Soviet prisoners in Hammelsburg. The fact, of course, did not escape the attention of the Gestapo. In December 1942, Thor was transferred to Flussenberg, where he was shot in January 1943.

Major General Vishnevsky was captured less than two weeks after he took command of the 32nd Army. This army was thrown near Smolensk at the beginning of October 1941, where it was completely destroyed by the enemy within a few days. This happened at a time when Stalin was assessing the likelihood of a military defeat and was planning a move to Kuibyshev, which, however, did not prevent him from issuing an order for the destruction of a number of senior officers who were shot on July 22, 1941. Among them: the commander of the Western Front, General of the Army Pavlov; the chief of staff of this front, Major General Klimovskikh; the head of communications of the same front, Major General Grigoriev; Commander of the 4th Army, Major General Korobkov. Vishnevsky withstood all the horrors of German captivity and returned to his homeland. However, his further fate is unknown.

In general, it is interesting to compare the scale of the losses of the Soviet and German generals.

416 Soviet generals and admirals were killed or died during the 46 and a half months of the war.

Information about the enemy appeared already in 1957, when a study by Voltman and Müller-Witten was published in Berlin. The dynamics of deaths among Wehrmacht generals was as follows. In 1941–1942, only a few people died. In 1943-1945, 553 generals and admirals were captured, of which over 70 percent were captured on the Soviet-German front. The vast majority of deaths among senior officers of the Third Reich fell on the same years.

The total losses of the German generals are twice the number of dead Soviet senior officers: 963 versus 416. Moreover, in certain categories, the excess was much greater. So, for example, as a result of accidents, German generals died two and a half times more, 3.2 times more went missing, and eight times more died in captivity than Soviet ones. Finally, 110 German generals committed suicide, which is an order of magnitude more than similar cases in the ranks of the Soviet army. What speaks of the catastrophic decline in the morale of the Nazi generals by the end of the war.