69th Rifle Corps of the 20th Army. See what the “69th Infantry Division” is in other dictionaries. th mechanized corps
The main similarity between the First and Second Strategic Echelons is that the most powerful armies from them were deployed not against Germany, but against the oil fields of Romania. The main difference between the First and Second strategic echelons is color. Yes. The echelons had different colors. The first strategic echelon is green and gray-green (protective, as they say in the army), the color of millions of soldiers' tunics. The protective color was also dominant in the Second Strategic Echelon, but it was generously diluted with black. One day I had to attend a meeting with retired General F.N. Remezov, who in 1941, under the cover of the TASS Report, abandoned the Oryol Military District, united all his troops and the troops of the Moscow Military District into the 20th Army and, leading it, secretly led it to the west. The conversation took place in our own circle, without strangers, and therefore quite frankly. The listeners are officers and generals of the district headquarters who know this issue not only from the memoirs of retired generals. They argued. In the heat of the argument, the lively colonel asked General Remezov the question directly:
“Why do the Germans call the 69th Rifle Corps of your 20th Army a “black corps” in documents? General Remezov did not give an intelligible answer. He kept referring to the 56th Army, which he commanded later, some of whose divisions were due to the lack of gray military overcoats were dressed in black railroad ones. But that was in December. Remezov clearly avoided answering. He is asked about June 1941, when there was no shortage yet and when soldiers, of course, did not run in battle in an overcoat - it was hot. In the 69th Rifle corps, many soldiers were dressed in black uniforms in the summer. These soldiers were numerous enough that German military intelligence took notice and unofficially called the 69th corps "black". Such a corps was not the only one. 63rd Rifle Corps of the 21st Army of the Second Strategic The echelon also passes according to German documents as the “black corps.” The commander of the 63rd Rifle Corps, commander L. G. Petrovsky, by any standards, was an outstanding commander. At the age of 15, he took part in the storming of the Winter Palace. He went through the entire Civil War and had three serious wounds. He ended the war as a regiment commander, age 18. At the age of 20, he brilliantly graduated from the Academy of the General Staff. Commands the best formations of the Red Army, including the 1st Moscow Proletarian Rifle Division. At the age of 35 - deputy commander of the Moscow Military District.
Komkor Petrovsky proved himself in battles to be a commander of a strategic scale. In August 1941, he received the military rank of lieutenant general and assignment to command the 21st Army. At that moment, after fierce fighting, the 63rd Rifle Corps was surrounded. Stalin ordered the corps to be abandoned and the army to immediately take over. Petrovsky asks to delay the order to take command of the army for several days, the plane sent for him is sent back, putting wounded soldiers on it. Petrovsky withdrew his “black corps” from the encirclement and again returned to the enemy’s rear to withdraw another division from the encirclement - the 154th Rifle Division (division commander Ya.S. Fokakov). During the breakout from encirclement, Petrovsky was mortally wounded. German soldiers, having discovered and identified Petrovsky’s corpse on the battlefield, by order of the higher command, buried the Soviet general with full military honors. A huge cross was erected on his grave with the inscription in German: “Lieutenant General Petrovsky, commander of the Black Corps.”
Soviet sources confirm this unusual gesture of the German command towards the Soviet general. You can read in detail about the actions of the 63rd “black corps” in VIZH (1966. N6).
The Soviet Military Encyclopedia (Vol. 6. P. 314) confirms the correctness of this article. Mentions of Petrovsky’s “black corps” can be found in the book of Lieutenant General of Artillery G.D. Plaskova (Under the roar of cannonade. P. 163).
The unusual black uniform in other armies of the Second Strategic Echelon was noted by German intelligence. When this uniform prevailed over the usual green one, regiments, divisions, and sometimes entire corps received the name “black”. The 24th Army of the Second Strategic Echelon, secretly advancing from Siberia, was no exception. During the battles, several of its regiments and divisions received the name “black” from the Germans. But even before entering the battle, very interesting things happened to the divisions and corps of this army. At the end of June, the echelons of this army stretched for thousands of kilometers. At this time, the army commander, Lieutenant General S.A. Kalinin (having abandoned the Siberian Military District) is already in Moscow and is solving the problem of how to feed the 24th Army. He gets an appointment with the secretary of the Moscow City Party Committee. Word to Lieutenant General S.A. Kalinin: “The MGK secretary contacted the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs by telephone.
The comrade I just spoke with,” explained the MGK secretary, “has extensive experience in organizing catering. For a long time he was engaged in this business during the construction of the Volga-Moscow canal. He will help you. About twenty minutes later, a tall, stately commander of the NKVD troops with three diamonds in the buttonholes of his tunic entered the secretary’s office, tightly belted. We quickly agreed on everything with him" (Reflections on the Past. P. 132-133).
It’s only a pity that General Kalinin is embarrassed to name the secretary of the Moscow City Committee and the slender, drawn-out man with three diamonds. After the first battles, the 24th Army falls into the right hands: NKVD Major General Konstantin Rakutin took command.
And Lieutenant General S.A. Kalinin, on Stalin's personal orders, returns to Siberia. No, no, don't command the district. The district remains abandoned. Kalinin, by order of Stalin, forms ten new divisions. Word to Kalinin:
“Formations were formed in places where previously there were no military units at all. I began my work from visiting these points. My first flight was to one of the cities of Siberia. A few years before the war, a barracks was built there, in the wilderness a town for lumberjacks. It was used to house parts of the formation that was being formed. Almost on all sides the town was surrounded by impenetrable taiga" (Ibid. p. 182). All about “barracks towns for lumberjacks” - from Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn: “The Gulag Archipelago”, all three volumes.
So, ten new divisions (more than 130,000 people) in the Siberian Military District are being formed not in places where there were previously military units, but in “barracks towns.” They will object that, of course, it is not prisoners who are turned into soldiers. General Kalinin simply uses empty barracks to accommodate arriving reservists, here they are trained and turned into soldiers. Fine. Let's agree with this. Where did the “lumberjacks” go in this case? Why is the “town” (and more than one) empty? Yes, simply because General Kalinin staffed the 24th Army with “lumberjacks” BEFORE THE START OF THE WAR and secretly prepared it for sending to the west. That is why the regiments and divisions in this army and in all other armies of the Second Strategic Echelon were black: the “lumberjacks” were often not even dressed in military uniform. That is why the army that Kalinin secretly transferred to the west is not at the expense of the Logistics Directorate of the General Staff of the Red Army, but of the Main Directorate of Camps of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs. That is why in the 24th Army Stalin places the pure-blooded Chekist Rakutin instead of the half-Chekist Kalinin. He knows better how to deal with “lumberjacks.”
(comments are also interesting)
...Five months ago, local historian Gennady Tambovtsev presented the book “At the Origins of Victory,” in which he spoke about the fate of the 61st rifle division, which went to the front in June 1941 and died after a month and a half of fighting.
The 61st Rifle Division was part of the 63rd Rifle Corps, which held defenses on the eastern bank of the Dnieper and which the Germans called the Black Corps.
In Penza, almost no one remembers about this division. There are no streets or schools named after her. There isn't even a school museum. And Gennady Tambovtsev told Moskovskaya Street why.
Black list
The division fought for a month and a half, and then died. Most of the fighters died along with her.
Those who survived the battles were mostly captured by the Germans and spent 4 years there. After the Victory, some of them were imprisoned in Stalin's camps. Nobody listened to such veterans.
One of the former party workers once told me that the 61st Infantry Division was forgotten because, in the opinion of comrades “from above,” it almost surrendered in formation. Therefore, in the post-war years they were ashamed to be interested in it, and then everyone died. And there was no one to ask.
The fact that the division surrendered was pure fiction.
I worked on this topic for more than 10 years, digging through archives, studying political reports, reports, memoirs, interviewing veterans.
For a month and a half of fighting, the division never left its positions without orders. Moreover, in July 1941, she managed to push back the tank division of Lieutenant General Model, the future field marshal, beyond the Dnieper.
Guderian himself was forced to spend 5 days searching for another crossing across the Dnieper. In those days, he noted in his diary: “The Russians occupy strong bridgeheads near Rogachev.” He wrote about the 61st division from Penza.
For the Germans, from whom armies, corps and fronts fled, the daring behavior of the 61st division became nonsense! This was, perhaps, the second click on the nose for them. The first was inflicted on them by the defenders of the Brest Fortress.
Lieutenant General Petrovsky, who commanded the 63rd Rifle Corps (which included our division), was respectfully nicknamed by the Germans the commander of the black corps. They remembered both him and our division for a long time.
Why did it happen that we ourselves almost forgot about it? About this incredible feat that we must honor...
The fact that several hundred Penza fighters were captured does not mean that they are cowards, but that they held their positions until the last moment. About how they ran out of cartridges and the Germans were catching them like animals.
The fate of this division is terrible. In a civilized country a monument would have been erected to her long ago. Or at least crossed off the list of traitors.
Composition of the 61st
The 61st Rifle Division (hereinafter referred to as the 61st Rifle Division) included 3 rifle regiments (66th, 221st and 307th), a light artillery and howitzer regiment, anti-tank and anti-aircraft artillery divisions, reconnaissance, engineer and motor transport battalions , a separate communications battalion, a separate chemical defense company, a medical sanitary battalion, a field bakery, a field communications point and a field cash desk of the state bank.
Two regiments of the division were stationed in Kamenka, one in Serdobsk. The main forces were stationed in Penza, on the territory of a military camp, now the territory of an artillery institute.
The division headquarters was located on the street. Kirov, in the current building of a military hospital. The training units were located in Selix.
61st Infantry Division was personnel. As of June 22, it had 5,900 personnel, and another 6,000 were called up as part of the 45-day military training. Total, almost 12 thousand people. Almost all of them are residents of the Penza region. And not 18-year-old boys, but real warriors who went through Finnish and Khalkhin Gol, smelled gunpowder, had orders and medals. They were 25-40 years old, almost all of them had wives and children.
The 61st rifle division was alerted on June 22. On this day, the commanders were given several hours to say goodbye to their families. No one was allowed to go home at night.
The division was sent to the front as trains arrived. Its main forces departed on June 23 and 24. They spent 4 days on the road. These days, the situation in Belarus has become sharply complicated, so the Headquarters decided to send 21 armies here. So we ended up on the Dnieper, in the area of Rogachev and Zhlobin.
First fights
The 61st Infantry Division became part of the 63rd Rifle Corps (hereinafter - RK). In addition to our division, it included two more rifle divisions: the 167th Saratov and the 154th Ulyanovsk.
The corps received a 70-kilometer defense line along the eastern bank of the Dnieper. In those days, huge German forces were moving here. Our pilots described it as a continuous stream of equipment from tanks, armored cars, trucks and tractors with guns. All this moved along the roads in several rows. And motorcycles with sidecars bounced on the side of the road.
The division from Penza took up positions on the Dnieper on July 2. On the same day, German tanks appeared on the western bank of the river. According to the recollections of one of the participants in that battle, “the Germans began to probe the place for the crossing, maneuvering right in front of us.”
Our fighters opened fire on them, and the Nazis retreated back. Damaged tanks and dead Germans remained on the shore.
The division took its first serious battle on July 5.
On this day, Lieutenant General Model attempted to cross the Dnieper and maintain a bridgehead on its eastern bank. At 13 o'clock he crossed the river northeast of Rogachev, near the village of Zborovo. Two rifle regiments were immediately brought to the breakthrough site: the 221st Penza and the 520th Saratov.
The battle was commanded by the corps commander, Lieutenant General Leonid Petrovsky. Unable to withstand the blow of our units, the Nazis hastily retreated beyond the Dnieper!
That day, with the support of tanks, they twice went on the offensive again, but each time they were thrown back with heavy losses.
The Chief of the General Staff of the German Ground Forces, Halder, described the Russian offensive tactics as follows: “a 3-minute fire raid, then a pause, after which an infantry attack shouting “Hurray” in deeply echeloned combat formations (up to 12 waves) without support from heavy weapons fire even in those cases where attacks are made from long distances. Hence the incredibly large losses of the Russians.”
That day, the Germans failed to gain a foothold on the eastern bank of the Dnieper. They reported to the command that the bridgehead had been taken. At the same time, they did not say the main thing: that they could not restrain him. The commander of Army Group Center, Field Marshal von Bock, will learn about this only after 3 days!
The German command then could not even imagine that there would be such a force that could resist the German army and throw it off the captured bridgehead.
Know: this force was the 221st rifle regiment from Penza.
Surprise for Fast Heinz
On July 6, troops of the 63rd Rifle Corps conducted reconnaissance in force in the area of Zhlobin. They attacked the Germans at dawn, not allowing them to come to their senses and forcing them to hastily retreat to the west.
The attacks of 63 sk became so unexpected for the Germans that they forced Guderian’s 2nd Panzer Group, rushing towards Moscow, to stop. After Model's division suffered significant damage at the crossing at Zborovo, Guderian did not dare give the command to cross here. Colonel General nicknamed Quick Heinz spent 5 days searching for a safer place. On the scale of the Blitzkrieg, this was a long time.
Guderian found a crossing north of our positions, in the area of Stary Bykhov, this was the strip of the neighboring army. On the night of July 10-11, his tanks crossed the Dnieper and rushed to Smolensk and Yelnya.
On July 13 at 17:00 our troops launched a counteroffensive. 63 sk fought through the rear of the troops of Field Marshal von Bock who had gone ahead.
On the first day he advanced 8-10 km beyond the Dnieper, and then over the next two days he walked another 4-6 km. By the end of July 16, the corps had knocked down the barriers of the German cavalry division and liberated the cities of Zhlobin and Rogachev. These were the first cities liberated from the enemy.
After this, the 63rd Infantry Corps went to Bobruisk, but it was not possible to advance further, because the promised one never came to help
25th Mechanized Corps Krivosheev.
In turn, the Germans pulled fresh infantry forces to the battlefield, supported by tanks and aircraft. With a series of powerful counterattacks, they inflicted irreparable losses on us and, under the threat of complete encirclement, forced us to retreat back to Zhlobin and Rogachev. 63 sk held these cities until mid-August, thereby pinning down the 2nd field army of General Weichs.
Stand to death
On August 4, Hitler decided to put an end to the armies that were bothering him and turned some of his troops from the Moscow direction to the south, thereby slowing down the pace of the attack on Moscow.
The German attacks on 63 sk intensified. Already on August 5, the front commander asked Headquarters to allow the withdrawal of the main forces of the corps beyond the Dnieper. But Stalin forbade this.
The enemy pressure on our division was powerful. Sometimes we attempted to counterattack, but they ended in failure. On August 6, at 3 o'clock in the morning, the 221st Penza Rifle Regiment tried to capture the height of 143.3 and came across heavy rifle, machine gun and mortar fire. The regiment lost several dozen people killed and 90 wounded. Ten people were captured. The enemy forced them to take off their tunics and remove the bodies of killed Soviet and German soldiers from the battlefield.
On August 11, Headquarters once again prohibited the withdrawal of 63 sk. to the eastern bank of the Dnieper. The next day, the Germans bypassed Rogachev on both sides, and the corps was under threat of complete encirclement.
Commander of the Black Corps
On August 13, the front command sent a U-2 plane for Corps Commander Petrovsky. But Petrovsky refused to get into it. He indicated in the note: “Leaving the corps troops in such a difficult situation is tantamount to flight.” The plane returned to front headquarters on the same day with a seriously wounded soldier.
On August 14, with the permission of the front commander, Petrovsky led his corps to break through. They crossed the Dnieper under enemy artillery fire and air strikes. The retreat of the corps was covered by the Penza 307th Infantry Regiment.
Having moved to the eastern bank of the Dnieper, the corps still found itself behind enemy lines. Against our two bloodless divisions (the Saratov division left in July for reinforcement near Smolensk), the Germans abandoned 7 full-blooded infantry divisions from the reserve.
Periodically regrouping his troops, Petrovsky began to strike the Germans blow after blow. In one of the battles, German mobile units cut off the corps headquarters from the main forces, and then Petrovsky personally led the headquarters officers to a breakthrough. They fired back with pistols, their swift blow forced the Germans to retreat. The headquarters again linked up with the corps troops and went southwest.
On August 17, at 3 a.m., the corps broke through another encirclement ring. The order signed by Petrovsky included the following clause: “All command personnel, regardless of rank and position, during the night attack, right up to the connection of corps units with units of the Red Army, should be in advanced chains, carrying effective weapons with the task of uniting around the entire personnel of the division."
Having broken through the encirclement, the corps quickly covered 6 km, defeated the headquarters of the 134th German infantry division and captured its combat documents in 6 briefcases.
However, after a few kilometers, the exhausted corps ran into a second ring of encirclement. As it turns out later, there were three rings of encirclement.
Petrovsky was wounded in the arm, but he continued to lead the battle. While bypassing the village of Skepnya from the north, the corps commander ran into an enemy ambush in the bushes. According to eyewitnesses, he was shot with a machine gun by people dressed in Red Army uniforms. Perhaps they were deserters; this happened in 1941.
Local residents buried General Petrovsky a kilometer south of the village of Rudenka.
According to other sources, Petrovsky was buried by prisoners on the orders of the Germans. A wooden cross was placed on his grave, where they wrote in Russian and German: “Commander of the Black Corps, General Petrovsky.” There is even a version that they gave the fireworks: supposedly some passing German general gave the order.
Liquidation
The next day, August 18, the commander of the 61st Infantry Division, Nikolai Andreevich Prishchepa, died from a shrapnel hitting his spine. He is buried near the village of Morozovichi, Gomel region.
After the death of Prishchepa, Chief of Staff Alexander Emilievich Hoffman was automatically appointed division commander. Hoffmann himself most likely did not find out about his appointment as a division commander, because by that time he was already captured.
By coincidence, on the day of the division commander’s death, the Penza newspaper “Stalin’s Banner” published a letter that had arrived from the front from soldiers of the 61st Infantry Division to fellow Penza residents. The letter says that “entire divisions, regiments and battalions, the best selected, mechanized units of the fascists are exterminated every day by the courageous warriors of our valiant Red Army. The Germans are afraid of the Russian bayonet like fire. And our valiant fighters, having excellent command of their weapons, defeated the enemy, throwing him far back.”
On the same day, Chief of the General Staff of the German Ground Forces Halder notes: “Apparently, the battles to eliminate the desperately resisting encircled enemy group east of Zhlobin are ending.” He writes about us.
According to the recollections of residents of Rogachev, after the Soviet troops left the city, machine gun fire was heard in the forest for several days. Behind barbed wire, in a special place, Soviet prisoners of war were shot. Local residents buried the dead with the permission of the German authorities.
Surroundings
From that time on, organized resistance to the 63rd Corps ceased.
On August 20, its scattered units reached the location of the 3rd Army. The chief of staff of the 3rd Army, Zhadov, recalled: “My eyes saw a difficult picture of the retreat: small groups and individuals were moving, on horses and cars, on foot. There were Red Army soldiers, sergeants, and commanders here. In total, about a thousand people came to our area. All of them were considered encirclement and, according to the existing regulations of that time, were sent to the front rear. At my own peril and risk, I left some commanders in the army, replenishing the headquarters departments with them.”
The remaining fighters of the corps entered the territory of Ukraine, where they again found themselves surrounded, subsequently ending up in the huge Kiev cauldron. Read about the further fate of the Penzyaks who were surrounded and captured in one of the following issues of Moskovskaya Street.
Life after death
The 61st Infantry Division was disbanded in September 1941 as it was killed in action.
At the regional military registration and enlistment office they told me that thirty years after the war, a veteran came to them, and the conversation was about 61 divisions.
When he was told that she had died in
1941, together with commander Prishchepa, he did not understand: “What Prishchepa?! What's wrong?! We have reached Berlin!”
It was a veteran from the second formation. It began in October 1941. Only not in Penza, but in Yerevan (Transcaucasian Military District).
The second formation of the division confirms the fact that somehow the fighters of the first formation managed to preserve and transport the division banner to their own. If the banner were lost, the division number would be eliminated and it would disappear forever.
Since the summer of 1942, the division took part in the battles for the passes in the Caucasus, then in the Battle of Stalingrad. There she received the first Order of the Red Banner.
On August 31, 1943, 2 rifle companies consisting of two officers, 20 sergeants and 330 cadets were sent to the 61st Rifle Division from the Seliksen camps. Most likely, more than half of them were Penzyaks.
The division passed through Kuban, Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Czechoslovakia, East Prussia and occupied quarters in Berlin one and a half kilometers from the Reichstag. The war ended on May 11 with a battle with the group of Field Marshal Scherner in Czechoslovakia.
Material prepared by Evgeny Malyshev
P.S.
Gennady Tambovtsev’s book “At the Origins of Victory” was published in 300 copies at the expense of entrepreneur Sergei Dvoryankin. There was no money in the Penza budget to publish a book about the Penza division.
One of the printing houses offered Gennady Tambovtsev to print a book for 250 thousand rubles. The printing house of Sergei Tugushev did it for 60 thousand rubles.
“It feels like they tried,” says Gennady Tambovtsev about the employees of Tugushev’s printing house. “You feel like you read it and were inspired by it.” They told me how best to design the book so that the pages would unfold well, the quality would be good, and the embossing would be good.”
The book can be purchased at the Vpereplete intellectual literature store.
It is difficult to find the book in Penza libraries, because out of twenty existing libraries only two acquired it: the library named after. V. G. Belinsky and the children's and youth library on the street. Tolstoy.
The presentation of the book took place on July 27, 2010 at the Penza Museum of Local Lore. “Moskovskaya Street” reported this in issue No. 354 of July 30, 2010.
Copies of the book were presented to the governor, ministers and other leaders. 5 months have passed, but no concrete proposals have been received from Penza officials to perpetuate the memory of the 61st division....
(Addendum)
61st Rifle Division (1st formation)
It is not possible to post all the information from the site, including lists of names, but at least a little:
THE MYSTERY OF THE DEATH OF LIEUTENANT GENERAL L.G. PETROVSKY
(chapter from the book)
GENERAL PETROVSKY'S LAST BATTLE
At 2 hours 30 minutes on August 17, northeast of the village of Chetverny, on the offensive site of the 510th rifle regiment of the 154th infantry regiment, at the second clearing of the forest overlooking the village of Zavod, the command and staff members of the 63rd infantry regiment and the 154th infantry regiment gathered .
After a brief clarification of the tasks by General Petrovsky, a number of commanders and political workers were sent to rifle units in order to help the unit commanders on the spot. Chief of Staff of the 154th Infantry Division, Colonel M.K. Agevnin and a group of commanders went to the 473rd rifle regiment, which occupied the starting area for the attack on the third clearing. For the same purpose, the head of the political department of the corps, regimental commissar N.F. Voronov left for the 510th infantry regiment.
One of the first researchers of the combat route of the 63rd Rifle Corps and the circumstances of the death of General L.G. Petrovsky retired colonel G.P. Kuleshov, who himself was a participant in those events, describes the events that took place that night.
“At exactly three o’clock on August 17, 1941, after a short but powerful artillery attack, the 473rd Infantry Regiment began its breakthrough. It was followed by attacks from all other parts of the division. The attack took the enemy by surprise, and units of the 154th Infantry Division, easily breaking through the enemy encirclement, quickly moved forward. In the village of Gubich, the headquarters of the enemy's 134th Infantry Division was destroyed and its combat documents were captured in six briefcases.
The ring of enemy blocking troops was broken. Now L.G. Petrovsky decided that he could and should return to the units covering the corps’ exit from the encirclement. The commander of the 154th Infantry Division, Major General Fokanov, and other comrades tried to persuade Petrovsky not to do this. “There’s nothing left for me to do here,” he said decisively. - It’s calm ahead, the decisive thing is now there... And you hurry to the troops, put them in order as soon as possible, and be ready to repel the attacks of the Germans, especially from Rechitsa. I'll be back soon".
And the corps commander, with a group of headquarters commanders and a reserve, went to where the fierce battle was taking place in order to personally lead the separation of the covering forces from the advancing enemy, to speed up their joining the divisions, reducing losses as much as possible. But the enemy, having brought in fresh units, again began to close the encirclement. Its secondary breakthrough took place under conditions that were much more difficult.
Having broken through in one place, the units found themselves in an even more difficult situation near the village of Skopnya, where the second line of the enemy ring ran. Here the adjutant of the corps commander, Lieutenant V. Kolesov, died; Petrovsky, wounded in the arm, continued to lead the battle. The breakthrough was still a success. But Leonid Grigorievich Petrovsky himself, during an attack by the enemy, who had fortified himself on the northern outskirts of Skepny, was mortally wounded by machine gunners disguised in the bushes. I told about this two hours later to the commander of the 154th Infantry Division, Ya.S. Fokanov, Chief of the Corps Artillery, Major General A.F. Kazakov, who was seriously wounded in this battle and carried out by a group of fighters."
Another participant in those tragic events, former chief of staff of the 473rd rifle regiment of the 154th infantry regiment, Major General B.G. Weintraub literally wrote the following:
“The corps made a breakthrough. Leonid Grigorievich went to the covering units in the 473rd regiment. He remained in the second echelon in order to personally withdraw the last units of the corps. The main forces fought through the ring. The other echelon did not have time to leave.”
To the story of Colonel G.P. Kuleshov, as well as the memoirs of Major General B.G. Weintraub, we will return later, because not everything they talk about corresponds to the real state of affairs. During the battle in the area of the village of Chetvernya, and then at Skepnya, many commanders and Red Army soldiers were killed. After a few days, not many were able to get through to their own people. With their heroic actions, the soldiers of the 63rd Rifle Corps were able, even if only for a few days, to distract the enemy from the main goal - Gomel, thereby giving other units and formations the opportunity to retreat to the east in an organized manner.
The Chief of the General Staff of the German Ground Forces, Colonel General F. Halder, did not fail to note in his diary the tenacity with which the soldiers of the 63rd Rifle Corps fought:
“Apparently the battles to eliminate the desperately resisting encircled enemy group in the area east of Zhlobin are ending.”
According to Marshal of the Soviet Union A.I. Eremenko, former commander of the 154th Infantry Division, Lieutenant General Ya.S. After the war, Fokanov, when meeting with him, spoke about the events of those days and the circumstances of the death of General L.G. Petrovsky:
“On August 16, 1941, Lieutenant General L.G. Petrovsky arrived to me, at the division command post in the area of the station. Khalch, southeast of the city of Zhlobin, where he assigned me and the commander of the 61st Infantry Division the task of breaking out from the enemy encirclement. The breakthrough time was set for 3.00 am on August 17th. By decision of Lieutenant General L.G. Petrovsky corps headquarters and he himself were supposed to make a breakthrough with the 61st division.
According to his order, the 154th Division, later the 47th Guards Division, began the breakthrough at exactly 3.00 on August 17th. At this time, the chief of staff of the corps, Colonel A.L., came to me. Feigin and conveyed Petrovsky’s order to appear to him.
Leaving a communications battalion, an engineer battalion, and a battery of an anti-tank battalion in reserve, I went to look for Petrovsky. When I found him, he informed me that the exit of the 61st Division was secured, and he would be with my division. By this time, the main units of the 154th Division, having broken through the encirclement ring, had advanced six kilometers. Ensuring their exit from the rear with the remaining units in reserve, we walked with Leonid Grigorievich from the station. Khalch to the village of Rudnya-Baranovka. At this time, the encirclement closed again, and we had to break through it again.
Having broken through the first line of defense near the village of Skepnya, which is 20 km southeast of Zhlobin, we came across the second line of defense of the Nazis. Here the adjutant of the corps commander was killed in battle, and Petrovsky himself was wounded in the arm.
Having assigned me the task of attacking the village of Skepnya, Petrovsky with his reserve went north of the village of Skepnya to secure the flank of the attackers. This was our last conversation with him.
After breaking through the second line of enemy defense, two hours later, I met the chief of artillery of the 63rd Corps, Major General A.F., wounded in the stomach. Kazakova, 2 km northeast of the village of Skepnya. I asked him where General Petrovsky and his headquarters were. He replied that Petrovsky and his chief of staff, Colonel Feigin, had been killed not far from him in the bushes by an enemy ambush, some of whom were dressed in Red Army uniforms, and some in women's dresses.
I took measures to search for Petrovsky and his chief of staff and sent two reconnaissance groups in the direction indicated by Major General Kazakov. Both groups returned with the same information, confirming Major General Kazakov’s report about the enemy’s ambush, but they did not find any corpses.
Major General Kazakov was placed on a cart and followed with me. However, soon the cart was destroyed by a direct hit from a mine, and General Kazakov was killed. We buried him immediately. As it turned out later, local residents buried L.G. Petrovsky, one kilometer south of the village of Rudenka. After the liberation of this area on July 13, 1944, in the presence of his relatives, his remains were transferred and buried with military honors in the village. Staraya Rudnya, Zhlobin district, Mogilev region."
Moving somewhat away from the topic of conversation, I would like to note the following fact. According to the testimony of Olga Leonidovna Tumanyan, for many years after the war, some officers came to them, leaving the encirclement along with Leonid Grigorievich, told who knew what about those events, as best they could, they reassured Nadezhda Vasilievna and Grigory Ivanovich. Alexander Ivanovich Eremenko, who became Marshal of the Soviet Union after the war, visited them several times, but General Ya.S. was never in the Petrovskys’ house. Fokanova. Why didn’t Yakov Stepanovich bother to visit his commander’s wife and didn’t want to tell the details about those events? Why did he find time to tell Marshal Eremenko about those events, but did not find a couple of hours to visit the Petrovskys? Even if, for some reason in the combat situation, General Fokanov and the soldiers and commanders who followed him fell behind their corps commander and lost sight of him, he could still tell a lot about that ill-fated day and about the last hours of General Petrovsky’s life. He could, but he didn't want to. What is the secret that General Fokanov, until his death, never bothered to look into the eyes of the widow of General Petrovsky and his daughter?
In December 2010, in one of the conversations with the daughter of General Petrovsky, Olga Leonidovna, she, a purely civilian, asked a very interesting question:
“I can understand everything: war is war. But here's what's interesting to me. In one of the first letters from the front, dad wrote that two hefty guards were assigned to him. He had an adjutant - a lieutenant. In addition, as Georgy Petrovich Kuleshov said, before breaking out of the encirclement, he was given a squad of soldiers to guard him. Next to him, dozens of commanders and Red Army soldiers attacked the enemy. And dad took on his last fight alone. Okay, the adjutant died. But where did everyone else go? How could he, their commander, be left alone? After all, when the Germans discovered him, he was completely alone.”
Even without going into the details of those distant and tragic events of August 1941, it should be noted that all three surviving direct participants talk too implausibly about the death of General Petrovsky, especially regarding his return to cover units, in order to “provide personal leadership separation of covering forces from the advancing enemy, speeding up their joining the divisions, reducing losses as much as possible.”
The children's assessment of the corps commander's actions is especially striking. In addition, what kind of cover units can we talk about if one military unit was left for cover from the rear - the 307th Infantry Regiment of the 61st Infantry Division. This regiment, as it should be in such cases, had to, through stubborn defense and selfless actions, or rather, at the cost of the lives of its Red Army soldiers and commanders, enable the main forces of the corps to try to break through the encirclement. That is, General Petrovsky had no one to return to: God grant that at least a hundred soldiers would remain alive in that regiment. And this is not the job of the commander of such a unit as a corps: he should command subordinate divisions, and not play the role of a guide.
All these are simply primitive inventions of the censorship of those years, which, without bothering to invent something smart, produced such nonsense. General Petrovsky was a fearless and brave commander, which he demonstrated more than once during the Civil War and at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War. He knew perfectly well his place in a combat situation and would never have thought of abandoning the corps to the mercy of fate and “with personal leadership to ensure the separation of the covering forces from the advancing enemy, to speed up their joining the divisions, reducing losses as much as possible.”
By inventing something like this, Glavpur’s censorship hoped that it was depicting something heroic, but in fact, utter stupidity was born, which was then replicated in books, and our respected veterans did not find the willpower to refute this.
Moreover, in the story by G.P. Kuleshov, published in a military-historical journal, there is a clear discrepancy with what actually took place during the period of the 63rd Infantry Corps’s breakthrough from encirclement. So, for example, he writes:
“The attack took the enemy by surprise, and units of the 154th Infantry Division, easily breaking through the enemy encirclement, quickly moved forward. In the village of Gubich, the headquarters of the enemy's 134th Infantry Division was destroyed and its combat documents were captured in six briefcases.
The ring of enemy blocking troops was broken. Now L.G. Petrovsky decided that he could and should return to the units covering the corps’ exit from the encirclement...”
The situation is depicted in such a way that Petrovsky decided to return to the covering units after the encircled men broke through to the village of Gubichi, where documents from the headquarters of the 134th German division were captured, which in fact took place. But the documents were captured from the enemy on the evening of August 18, i.e. a day after Petrovsky’s death.
From the operational report of the headquarters of the Central Front for August 19, 1941:
“At the 323rd Infantry Division’s site, two regiments of the 154th Infantry Division entered the CHEBOTOVICHI area, which, when leaving the rear of the pr-ka, destroyed the headquarters of the 134th Infantry Infantry, captured combat documents.”
The settlement of Gubichi is located 10 km south of the place where General Petrovsky died, which means that he could not have been in this area. In addition, from the regiment, which covered the actions of the corps from the rear, it was about 20 km to Gubich. Why were these fairy tales needed? And there are a lot of such inconsistencies in the text. If you analyze the events described, looking at the map, it’s not at all clear what happens. However, let’s finish here with an analysis of what we inherited from the past.
Now that we know about the death of Lieutenant General L.G. Petrovsky, almost everything, as it seemed to us, at least for many years, we will turn to three very important documents from one criminal case, which will not only put an end to our investigation, but will also give an absolutely accurate answer to many questions, if not all .
Document one.
"PROTOCOL OF INTERROGATION
1949, January 20th day, city of Gomel, BSSR.
I am the head of the MGB Department for the Gomel region. Lieutenant Colonel BATURIN, on this date interrogated as a witness the prisoner of war BREMER Hans Ludwig, born in 1918,
native of the village Brankendorf, Rostock district,
Province of Micklenburg, comes from employees,
has a high school education, graduated from a one-year school
officer school, was a member of the youth
Hitler-Jugent organization from 1934 to 1935
last military rank - chief lieutenant, last
position held - commander of the defensive
Micklenburg Provincial Headquarters Division, contained
in prisoner of war camp N: 168, Minsk.
On liability for giving false testimony under Art. 136 of the Criminal Code of the BSSR warned: /SIGNATURE/.
Question: In what language do you wish to testify?
Answer: I can give my testimony freely in Russian, because... I own it (write, read and talk).
Question: Tell us about your service in the German army.
Answer: I was drafted into the German army on October 17, 1936 in the 27th Infantry Regiment, where I served as a soldier until October 1937. In October, I was awarded the military rank of corporal and transferred to the position of squad commander in the 74th infantry. regiment, where he served until June 1938, where he was awarded the military rank of non-commissioned officer and sent to a one-year officer school, from which he graduated in April 1939 with the rank of lieutenant and was appointed to the position of platoon commander of the 74th infantry regiment, from where he was transferred to 487 infantry regiment to the position of platoon commander, where he served until September 1939. From September 1939 to November 1939, he attended courses in chemical defense and tactical reconnaissance. Upon completion of the course, he was appointed platoon commander of the 487th infantry. regiment and was transferred along with the regiment to the Belgian border. When the German army began hostilities against France, I commanded a tactical reconnaissance platoon at the 267th Infantry Division, where I was stationed until July 1940. In July 1940, I was appointed to the position of regimental officer, department “1-C”; I worked in this position until March 1941. Working as an officer in the “1-C” department of the regiment, I was engaged in intelligence work among the local population through persons entrusted to me, who were given to me by the “1-C” department of the division and the local commandant’s office, and in addition through persons who wanted to help the Germans, but without formalizing recruitment. From France, our division was transferred to the Russian-Polish border, to the area southwest of the mountains. Brest, where he was appointed commander of the 487th infantry anti-tank company. shelf. In this position, I fought with the Soviet Union from 22/VI-1941 to 3/VII-1942, and from July to August 1942 I was treated in the hospital. Upon recovery, I was appointed instructor of the Georgian Legion, which was formed in Poland, near the city of Radom. From January 1945 to the day of Germany's surrender, he served at the headquarters of the local defense of the province of Micklenburg, where he was captured by Soviet troops.
Question: In what direction did you participate in the battles against the Soviet Union?
Answer: From the first days of the war, i.e. from 22/VI-1941 to 3/VII-1942 I participated in the offensive battles of the German army on the central front as commander of an anti-tank company and moved through the following settlements: Malorita, Kobrin, Slutsk, Bobruisk, Rogachev, Zhlobin , Streshin, Skepnya, again Zhlobin, Rogachev, Krichev, Roslavl, Dorogobuzh, Vyazma, Gzhatsk, Mozhaisk, west. Zvenigorod and back again to Gzhatsk.
Question: Tell us in detail about the military operations in the area of the town of Streshin.
Answer: On August 13, 1941, German troops were in the area of the cities of Rogachev, Zhlobin and the town of Streshin, preparing an operation to encircle and liquidate a group of Soviet troops in this area - the 63rd Rifle Corps. To completely encircle the Soviet troops in this area, German troops launched an offensive with the 467th and 487th infantry regiments towards the places. Streshin and der Zaton, at this time the Dnieper River was crossed and the settlements Skepnya and Pirevichi were occupied, united with the 20th Panzer Division. Thus, in the area of Rogachev, Zhlobin, Streshin, Skepnya and Pirevichi, the 63rd Rifle Corps of the Soviet troops was surrounded by German troops, but the German command did not dare to completely liquidate it, because the strength, weapons and intentions of the enemy were not known, in addition, north of Streshin, in the adjacent forests the strong work of engines could be heard, we believed that there were large tank forces there that could launch a counterattack, break through the encirclement line in the direction of Gomel, and our the forces in this place were weak. At this time, I participated in this operation as the commander of an anti-tank fighter company. Headquarters 487 Inf. a regiment of German troops was located on the outskirts of the village. Skepnia, on the northern side of the village. The encirclement of Soviet troops in the area I indicated above was completed on August 14, 1941, in the evening.
To eliminate the grouping of Soviet troops I mentioned above and make a decision on this issue. The command of the German army took military reconnaissance measures on the night of August 14-15 and on the morning of August 15, but no information about the encircled group was received. Having no information about the encircled group, the commander of the 487th infantry. regiment Colonel Hoecker, by order of the beginning. headquarters 267 infantry. division of Lieutenant Colonel Von Troth on August 15, 1941, at 2 o'clock in the afternoon, convened a meeting of the regiment's commanding staff for the purpose of exchanging views on the situation of the encircled group. Present at this meeting were: regiment commander Colonel Hoecker, chief. Infantry Division Headquarters Lieutenant Colonel Von-Troth, head. Department "1-C" Captain Benke, adjutant to the regiment commander Art. Lieutenant Deigner, translator of the Sonder-Führer Oswald regiment, officer of the 1-C department of the regiment, Lieutenant Heinck and J.
At this meeting the beginning. Division headquarters, Lieutenant Colonel Von Trotha, said that we knew nothing about the position of the encircled group, military reconnaissance had given nothing and set the task, at any cost, to carry out reconnaissance in the forests in the area north of the village. Skepnya. The regiment's translator, Oswald, suggested resorting to using the local population for this purpose. Beginning Division headquarters Von Trotha approved this event, but at the same time expressed his doubts about the possibility of finding such a person who could agree and carry out reconnaissance in the encircled group of Soviet troops, especially since this had to be done quickly. Oswald reported that he had a local person in mind, a man, approximately 48-50 years old, who is friendly and loyal to the German army, happy with its arrival, he lives on the edge of the village. Skepnya, on the north side, building 3, where our radio station is located, that he had already talked with him several times, during the conversation he expressed anti-Soviet sentiments to him. After listening to this, the beginning. Division headquarters Von Trotha ordered Oswald to invite this citizen to a meeting, he did so. When this citizen came to the meeting, then com. regiment, Colonel Hoecker, through an interpreter, Oswald told this citizen that the German command needed to have information about what was and was happening in the forest, which is located north of the village. Skepnya. This citizen, unknown to me, at first did not agree to carry out this for fear that the Russians would find out about this and shoot him. When com. regiment, Colonel Hoecker again, through an interpreter, Oswald conveyed to him that no one could suspect him of this and that if he completed the task assigned to him well, his German command would reward him for this. After that, this citizen agreed to complete this task and began. division headquarters Von-Troth from the beginning. Division "1-C" of the division, Captain Benke, through interpreter Oswald, gave this citizen the following assignment: to go to the forest area, which is located north of the village. Skepnya and find out the number of Soviet troops, their weapons, how many tanks and motorized columns there are, and what is their intention to get out of the encirclement. The man, unknown to me, whom Oswald brought, mastered this task and at about 5-6 pm he left to carry it out. How he completed this task was not known to me until the morning of 16/VIII-41. On 16/VIII-41, the regimental commander, Colonel Hoecker, again convened a meeting of the above-mentioned persons, but without the presence of the commander. Infantry Division Headquarters, Lieutenant Colonel Von Trotha and told us the result of reconnaissance of the area where this man was sent, he explained to us that in the encircled group of Soviet troops there was a lot of artillery, convoys, several tanks and that in a day they intended to break through the encirclement in the direction of Gomel , and for this purpose a large amount of manpower and equipment is concentrated in a small area. These data, as the regiment commander said, were transferred by him to the division headquarters, and added that for reinforcements at the expected breakthrough site, i.e. The 192nd Infantry Division will arrive at our sector of the front for reinforcements. He warned us to take all measures to better observe the behavior of the surrounded group and prepare the soldiers for a surprise battle.
At approximately 3 o'clock on 17/VIII-41, the encircled group of Soviet troops began military operations to break through the German defense line on a small section of the front, in the direction of the city of Gomel, in this battle, Soviet troops broke through the German defense line and approached the village of Skepnya from the north, where by this time the 192nd Infantry Division had arrived for reinforcements, which pushed the Soviet troops back, and at that time, as I later learned, German troops from three sides, i.e., from the southern and northern sides of Rogachev and from the eastern side of Zhlobin, began offensive, to narrow the encirclement ring, and the 192 and 267 infantry divisions, located on the northern side of the village. Skepnya, held only the defense and did not allow the encircled group of Soviet troops to break through.
Thus, in this operation, the encircled group of Soviet troops was eliminated at approximately 11 o'clock on the day of 17/VIII-41. There were many soldiers and officers killed and captured, all the equipment was left as trophies, but a small part of the soldiers and officers had to break through and escape the encirclement. I cannot say about the magnitude of losses on the part of the encircled group of Soviet troops, I only remember that in the sector of our regiment, 2 thousand soldiers and officers and up to 500 people were captured. was killed. During the liquidation of the encircled group of Soviet troops I indicated above, the chief of staff of the 63rd Rifle Corps, Colonel Faigin, was captured, who told us during his interview that the corps commander, Lieutenant General Perovsky, decided to break out of the encirclement in the direction of Gomel, and for this in this direction, the necessary forces for a breakthrough were concentrated on a small section of the encirclement line and an offensive was launched.
Consequently, the intelligence data brought by a citizen unknown to me, whom the German command sent on 15/VIII-41, was confirmed by the captured early. headquarters of the 63rd Corps by Colonel Faigin. After the battle, a soldier of my company, Schindekutte, reported to me that he and another soldier went to look for a captured passenger car on the outskirts of the forest, north of the village. Skepnya found a good passenger car, under which a Russian serviceman was lying, the soldiers ordered him to surrender, but without answering, he fired a pistol and killed one soldier with one of the shots, and the remaining soldier Schindekutte also began to shoot at this serviceman and killed him. This soldier took the car and the serviceman's overcoat, came to me and reported this. Seeing the insignia of the highest command staff of the Soviet Army on the overcoat, I took the overcoat, brought it to the regimental headquarters and reported this to Colonel Hoeker, who, based on the insignia, was convinced that this was the overcoat of the highest command staff and ordered me to deliver this soldier to him and he us in a car took him to the place where a Soviet army soldier was killed. We, i.e. I, Colonel Hoecker, Captain Behnke and Lieutenant Deigner, actually discovered the lying corpse of a murdered man with the same insignia on his tunic as on his overcoat; Captain Benke found a small red book in the pocket of his tunic, which turned out to be an identity card, containing his photograph. and the inscription - Lieutenant General Petrovsky, and a map and some orders were found in the field bag. The regiment commander, Colonel Hoecker, ordered the corpse to be buried in the same place and an inscription to be made above the grave that Lieutenant General Petrovsky was buried here, and this was done. When we arrived at the regimental headquarters and turned to the captured Colonel Faigin and showed him his identity card, he confirmed that it was indeed the commander of the 63rd Rifle Corps, Lieutenant General Petrovsky.
Question: What reward did this citizen receive from the German command for completing the task?
Answer: As I was told later by the officer of the “1-C” department of the regiment, Lieutenant Heinck, that this citizen, who went on reconnaissance in the area of operation of the Soviet troops, was given a monetary reward, food and vodka, but in what quantity, he told me about it did not say, but said that this citizen was given a document stating that he had provided great assistance to the German command, to be presented, if necessary, to representatives of the German authorities, in order to receive the corresponding privilege.
Question: Can you find and identify this citizen?
Answer: Based on the signs I showed, I can find his place of residence; he lives in the third house from the edge in the village. Skepnya, from the north side, where our radio station stood, I can also recognize him by sight.
/SIGNATURE/.
The protocol from my words was written down correctly and was read by me personally, to which I sign. /SIGNATURE/.
Interrogated by: Head of the MGB Department
in Gomel region - Lieutenant Colonel (Baturin).
AND ON THE RAILWAY ST. ZHLOBIN - (KUZNETSOV) ".
On March 31, 1949, Bremer was again summoned for questioning, where he was additionally asked several more questions.
Document two.
"PROTOCOL OF INTERROGATION
Witness of the prisoner of war Bremer Hans Ludwig
Additional - March 31, 1949.
On liability for giving false testimony under Art. 136 of the Criminal Code of the BSSR
warned: /SIGNATURE/.
Question: During interrogation on January 20, 1949, you testified that your soldier of your company showed Petrovsky’s corpse at the site of the battle with Soviet troops. Find out now how it happened.
Answer: When on August 17, 1941, in the area of the village. When the battle between Soviet and German troops ended, my 43rd and 14th anti-tank fighter companies, of which I was the commander of the 487th German infantry regiment, I sent two soldiers to the battlefield to search for the vehicle. One of the soldiers I sent drove a passenger car into the village and brought with him an overcoat, telling me that it was the overcoat of a high Soviet officer. One of these two soldiers did not return, he was killed, on this issue I have already given testimony. When this soldier showed me the overcoat, I took it and went to the commander of the 487th Infantry Regiment, Colonel Hacker. The regiment commander ordered this soldier of mine to show where the corpse of this man from whom he brought the overcoat was located. Moreover, we first looked at the differences between officers of the Soviet Army in the reference book. This reference book is available at the regimental headquarters, from which we determined that the overcoat belongs to the Lieutenant General. Colonel Hacker, the officer of the “1-C” department of the regiment, Lieutenant Heinck, I and a soldier of my company, who brought a car and an overcoat, went to the place of the corpse.
Question: Where did you go and where was the body found?
Answer: From the village. Skepnya, on the northern side of it, from the extreme house where the regiment headquarters was located, we drove along the Skepnya - Rudenka road. The soldier of my company, who was traveling with us, led us to the place where he took a passenger car and an overcoat, which I showed above. The corpse of a killed Soviet officer was shown to us by a soldier of my company on the Skepnya - Rudenka road, as far as I remember now, 2.5 kilometers from the village. Skepnya not far from the road on the right side, village. Rudenka was at a closer distance than Skepnya from the corpse. When we approached the corpse, in the pocket of the tunic we found an identification card, according to which we established that this dead man was Lieutenant General Petrovsky, commander of the 63rd Rifle Corps of the Soviet Forces. I have already shown this in detail. The commander of the 487th German Infantry Regiment, Colonel Hacker, ordered Petrovsky’s corpse to be buried separately, to put up a cross and on the cross to make an inscription in Latin letters “Lieutenant General Petrovsky”. Colonel Hacker gave precise instructions on this issue to the officer of the 1st "C" regiment, Lieutenant Heinck. After that, we returned from Petrovsky’s corpse back to the regimental headquarters in the village. Skepnya. Later, from conversations with Lieutenant Heinck, I knew that he sent soldiers from the regiment headquarters for Petrovsky’s funeral. And that they buried him as the regiment commander ordered. Personally, I have not seen Petrovsky’s grave.
The protocol from my words was written down correctly and read to me.
Painting.
Interrogated: Head of the UMGB department - lieutenant colonel
(Shmidokin).
Art. Opera. UMGB - Art. l-nt
(Makhov).
Correct: HEAD OF THE DEPARTMENT OF THE UKGB AT THE CM OF THE BSSR
AROUND THE GOMEL REGION AROUND THE CITY
AND ON THE RAILWAY ST. ZHLOBIN - (KUZNETSOV).”
Another interesting document has survived.
Document three.
"PROTOCOL OF INTERROGATION
1949, March, 30 days.
I, Art. oper. Upol. UMGB - Gom. Region Art. Deutenant Makhov interrogated Saveliy Afanasyevich NOVIKOV, born in 1882, a native of the village, as a witness. Rudenka, Zhlobin district, Gomel region, from middle peasants, Belarusian, unemployed, illiterate, lives at his place of birth, works on a collective farm as an ordinary collective farmer.
On liability for giving false testimony under Art. 136 of the Criminal Code of the BSSR, warned.
Question: Where did you live and what did you do during the Patriotic War?
Answer: During the Patriotic War, I lived in the village. Rudenka, Zhlobin district, Gomel region, worked on his agriculture.
Question: What do you know about the defeat of Soviet troops by the Germans in August 1941 in the area of your village. Rudenka?
Answer: In August 1941, around the 16th-17th, there were strong battles between Soviet and German units in the area of our village. Rudenka, where Soviet troops were subsequently surrounded, some of them were killed, and some were captured by the Germans.
Question: Who commanded the Soviet unit that was defeated by the Germans in the area of the village. Rudenka?
Answer: At that time I personally did not know who commanded the Soviet unit that the Germans defeated, but later through the village residents, from whom I don’t remember exactly, I learned that the commander of the Soviet unit that the Germans defeated was General Petrovsky, who was killed and buried by the Germans in the southern side of the village. Rudenka, on the left side of the highway, about a kilometer away.
Question: By whom and under what circumstances was Petrovsky’s grave opened?
Answer: In June 1944, to our village. Rudenka, a truck arrived with five members of the Soviet command on it, who asked where Petrovsky’s grave was. I, Pavel Vlasovich Bykov and Stepan Ignatovich Melnikov (now deceased) went with them to the grave site, where they offered us to dig up the grave, which we did. A corpse was removed from the grave, which was identified by representatives of the Soviet command and a medical expert commission, for which a corresponding report was drawn up. After which this corpse of Petrovsky was transported by car to the village. Staraya Rudnya, where he was buried and a monument was made to him.
Question: Relatives of General Petrovsky came to see you in the village. Rudenka?
Answer: About a week after we dug up Petrovsky’s corpse, we came to our village. Rudenka and Petrovsky’s father, mother and sister came to me personally and asked how Petrovsky was killed. In conversations I told them that I didn’t know how he was killed, but I dug him out of the grave, after which they left to a place unknown to me.
Question: How was Petrovsky’s grave decorated after his funeral by the Germans?
Answer: Petrovsky’s grave was placed on a small embankment on the surface of the ground, a board cross with the German inscription “General Petrovsky” was placed, but this cross was torn down by someone by the time of the excavation.
The protocol from my words was recorded correctly and read to me personally.
Painting.
Interrogated by: Art. Opera. Complete UMGB - G.O.
Art. Lieutenant (Makhov).
Correct: HEAD OF THE DEPARTMENT OF THE UKGB AT THE CM OF THE BSSR
AROUND THE GOMEL REGION AROUND THE CITY AND ON
Zh.D. ST. ZHLOBIN - (KUZNETSOV).”
There is nothing to comment on, as they say in such cases. The people who gave these testimonies many years ago told the honest truth, without embellishing or changing anything: there was no point in lying to them.
Now that everything has fallen into place, not to mention some of the subtleties that are not able to change anything significantly, we will take the liberty and try to summarize all the material concerning the death and burial of the commander of the 63rd Rifle Corps, Lieutenant General Petrovsky Leonid Grigorievich, to recreate the picture of the last day of his life.
So, at three o’clock in the morning on August 17, 1941, the 63rd Rifle Corps launched a breakthrough, delivering the main blow in the direction of Gubichi, Rechitsa, with the aim of connecting with the main forces of the army, which were fighting at that time in the Gomel region.
The hull is a strong word, but rather it should be said - the remains of parts of the hull. Losses during previous battles, and especially during the crossing to the left bank of the Dnieper, were very large. This is evidenced by both the documents of the 21st Army and the documents of Army Group Center. A large number of Red Army soldiers and commanders were captured during previous hostilities. According to the enemy, during the fighting in the Gomel direction from July 10 to July 20, 1941, they captured 54,000 people, captured 144 tanks and 548 guns.
We should not forget that by this time the 63rd Rifle Corps had already been fighting for several days as part of two divisions - the 61st and 154th Infantry Divisions.
By this time, the enemy had surrounded Petrovsky’s corps with a rather dense ring, and besides, the terrain in which our units had to make a breakthrough made any maneuver significantly difficult, even despite the fact that it was summer and the weather was warm, dry , which made it possible to use all forest roads and paths for advancement.
The units of the 467th and 487th Infantry Regiments of the 267th Infantry Division, occupying defense on the inner rim of the encirclement, using the terrain wisely, blocked almost all exits from the concentration area in the southern and southeastern direction. While simultaneously conducting active offensive operations in the direction of Gomel, the enemy was still unable to allocate sufficient forces and means to destroy the encircled group. True, after the German command received more accurate information about the composition of the encircled group and the possible direction of its actions, although it was already easy to guess, units of the 192nd Infantry Division were additionally brought into this area. However, all the same, the forces and means were clearly not enough to tightly block all the paths and roads, which subsequently allowed some of the soldiers and commanders of the 154th and 61st Infantry Division of the 63rd Corps, including the general, to break out of the encirclement -Major Ya.S. Fokanov.
Units of the 134th Infantry were fighting on the outer rim of the encirclement.
General L.G. Petrovsky emerged from encirclement in the same group together with the chief of staff of the corps, Colonel A.L. Feigin, military commissar of the corps, brigade commissar Ya.I. Pavlov, chief of artillery, Major General A.F. Kazakov, adjutant to the corps commander, Lieutenant V.I. Kolesov, commander of the 154th Infantry Division, Major General Ya.S. Fokanov. This group also included commanders and Red Army soldiers of the corps headquarters units and the 154th Infantry Division. The 473rd rifle division of the 154th division was supposed to operate ahead of them.
Directly in the area where the corps headquarters and units of the 154th Infantry Division were supposed to break out of encirclement, the defense was held by units of the 487th Infantry Division of the 267th Infantry Division, whose headquarters were located in the village of Skepnya.
The enemy was ready to repel the advance of our units. Not the least role in this was played by information that was reported to the command of the 487th Infantry Regiment by one of the local residents, whom he sent to the area where units of the 63rd Rifle Corps were located. This resident, on the night of August 15-16, 1941, freely penetrated the location of our units, and was able not only to identify the probable composition of the encircled group, but even to find out the intentions of the corps command regarding the direction and time of the start of the breakout from the encirclement.
By the way, speaking about this fact, you begin to think that, probably, the military special officers during the war were right after all, suspecting every one of our compatriots who was in the occupied territory of having connections with the enemy. Of course, suspecting everyone is too much, but the fact of the lack of vigilance on the part of the personnel of the encircled group of the 63rd Rifle Corps, especially its commanders and employees of the NKVD department, is obvious. How could an agent sent by the enemy freely penetrate into the area of our troops, wander all night through the forest occupied by our encircled units, collect data on their composition, and then freely return back and report to the command of the 487th Infantry Division the results of what he saw? How many human lives does this scoundrel account for? But had our Red Army soldiers and commanders shown the necessary vigilance, the situation would have developed differently.
After all, it was precisely after he reported to the headquarters of the 267th Infantry Division the information he had collected on the intended breakthrough site for the corps units, i.e. Several units of the 192nd Infantry Division were sent to the Staraya Rudnya area, Khalch station, Chetvernya, Skepnya for reinforcement, and the units of the 487th Infantry Division defending here were put on full alert.
So what to say that the enemy was taken by surprise, as G.P. writes about it. Kuleshov, it’s simply not necessary. On the contrary, as soon as our units began to advance, German artillery opened heavy fire. From the very first minutes, the battle took on a bloody character and the fact that our units managed to break through the enemy barrier near the village of Chetvernya testifies not to the weakness of the German defense, but to the heroism of our soldiers who fought against the German occupiers without sparing their lives. This is now evidenced by the mass grave located in this locality, in which more than two hundred commanders and Red Army soldiers of the 63rd Infantry Division who died in battle on that August day in 1941 are buried.
When a fierce battle broke out at Chetvernya, General Petrovsky, apparently, decided with his group to attempt a breakout from the encirclement, acting in the direction of the village of Skepnya.
The descriptions of the battle during the breakthrough from encirclement by both General Fokanov and Colonel Kuleshov differ greatly from each other, but they have one thing in common - they clearly do not correspond to what happened. Fokanov, contradicting himself, writes:
“Having broken through the first line of defense near the village of Skepnya, 20 km southeast of Zhlobin, we came across the second line of defense of the Nazis. Here the adjutant of the corps commander was killed in battle, and Petrovsky himself was wounded in the arm. Having assigned me the task of attacking the village of Skepnya, Petrovsky with his reserve went north of the village of Skepnya to secure the flank of the attackers. This was our last conversation with him."
It’s not clear - having broken through the first line of defense at Skepnya, Fokanov receives the task of attacking the village of Skepnya. It seems as if the village is surrounded by defense lines, like Berlin in 1945. Although it is well known that the enemy defended along the northern and northeastern outskirts of the village, using only one trench for defense. This means that the enemy’s defenses simply were not broken through in this place.
But it definitely turns out that General Fokanov at this point parted ways with the corps commander, General L.G. Petrovsky, who, according to him, went with his group north of the village of Skepni. This is quite likely because it was in this area, 3 km northeast of Skepnya, that General Petrovsky died.
True, General Fokanov again does not link the further description of his actions with either the situation or the terrain. He writes that two hours after breaking through the enemy’s second line of defense at Skepni, 2 km northeast of this village he met Major General A.F., wounded in the stomach. Kazakova. Who told him that Petrovsky and his chief of staff, Colonel A.L. Feigin was killed near Skepny by an enemy ambush hidden in the bushes, and some of the German soldiers were dressed in Red Army uniforms, and some in women's dresses.
But why does Y.S. Fokanov needed to go with his group in a completely different direction, to the northeast, if his course, after breaking through the enemy defenses in the Skepni area, lay south to Gubich, as ordered by the corps commander?
The most important thing is that the fact of who invented the fact that Petrovsky and his chief of staff, Colonel Feigin, were killed near Skepny by an enemy ambush, some of whom were dressed in a Red Army uniform, and some in a woman’s dress, remained unclear - Kazakov or Fokanov. And why was there a need to talk about a masquerade with the enemy dressing up? It seems that it is not our units that are leaving the encirclement, but the German ones, masquerading as local residents.
Also implausible is the story of General Fokanov about the search for General Petrovsky and Colonel Feigin. As if he was not surrounded by the enemy, but was playing “Zarnitsa”: “he sent two reconnaissance groups in the direction indicated by Major General Kazakov. Both groups returned with the same information, confirming Major General Kazakov’s report about the enemy’s ambush, but they did not find any corpses.”
All this is extremely implausible. Either they say that it was impossible to break through the enemy’s defenses, or they “walk” back and forth in the area occupied by the enemy without any visible problems or danger to life. In addition, the chief of staff of the corps, Colonel A.L. Feigin, as you know, not only did not die during the breakthrough, but was not even wounded, but was captured by the enemy. How this happened is also not clear.
Apparently, while moving in a northeastern direction along the Skepnya - Rudenka road, Petrovsky’s group was forced to take the fight, and then found itself scattered by enemy infantry fire. Only this can justify the fact that at the time Petrovsky was discovered by two German soldiers, he was alone, and there were only a few cartridges left in his pistol.
By the way, the head of the political department of the 63rd Regimental Commissar N.F. Voronov, who was emerging from encirclement as part of the 510th Infantry Division of the 154th Infantry Division, did not remember any enemy soldiers dressed in peasant clothes. Although his story, starting from the death of General Kazakov, ending with the death of General Petrovsky, is absolutely not true, but is more like fiction:
“Dirty green uniforms flashed between the trees. A shootout ensued between staff officers and the Nazis. A machine gun burst knocked to the ground the chief of artillery of the corps, Major General Kazakov. At the very last moment, Lieutenant Kolesov managed to block Leonid Grigorievich with his body and was wounded. Petrovsky raised his subordinates to attack. This was his last fight. Struck by an enemy bullet, he fell -
Lieutenant Kolesov rushed to him. He quickly bandaged the general, gathering his last strength, dripping with blood, he put him on his shoulders and carried him to a safe place.”
There are a lot of stories that General Petrovsky was wounded during the breakthrough period, as well as, by the way, stories that his wounded (or even killed) was carried for several kilometers in the arms of soldiers and commanders alternately. But all these testimonies are based, as a rule, on someone else's stories. Some indicate that he was wounded in the arm. Member of the Military Council of the Western Front P.K. Ponomarenko said that Petrovsky was wounded in the stomach and died from this wound. General Kazakov allegedly said that Petrovsky was wounded twice, the second time seriously, but did not say where.
P. Khotko, who at that time was the commissioner of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belarus in the Zhlobin region, wrote in his letter to Georgy Petrovich Kuleshov: “The eyewitness commander told me that Petrovsky was wounded in the stomach. The Red Army soldiers carried him in their arms. The general suffered greatly."
But this is all, most likely a heroic epic that had nothing to do with reality. The medical examination carried out during the exhumation of the remains of Lieutenant General Petrovsky in June 1944 could not answer the question: “Was General Petrovsky injured?” due to the length of time the remains were in the ground. No obvious traces of injury were found on the corpse.
According to the testimony of former German officer Hans Bremer, commander of the anti-tank company of the 487th Infantry Division, the battle in the Skepny area ended at about 11 o'clock in the afternoon, and his soldiers went in search of a passenger car a few hours later. This means that Petrovsky was either hiding under the car all this time, waiting for night, or accidentally happened to be near it at the moment when two German soldiers came out to it, and was forced to hide under the car.
Speaking of the car. How could a light command vehicle end up in this area? As of August 1, 1941, there were quite a few passenger cars in the units and formations of the 63rd Rifle Corps, or rather, as many as 50 units. Of course, by August 17, their number had noticeably decreased. Alternatively, we can assume that it was Petrovsky’s car.
But where is the driver then and why was General Petrovsky alone at that moment? A very interesting question, but he couldn’t have survived alone after that battle, even taking into account that his adjutant, Lieutenant V.I., was killed in the last battle. Kolesov. And under what circumstances was Colonel A.L. captured? Feigin? And how was General Kazakov, wounded in the stomach, able to get further than he did?
It's all somehow strange. It is not at all necessary that Petrovsky at the first stage left the encirclement on foot. It could also be that at first he and his deputies moved out in an armored vehicle or even in a passenger car. After all, according to the recollections of the same women from the 22nd medical battalion of the 61st rifle division, during the breakout from the encirclement there were quite a lot of different cars, and in order to drive faster, they had to choose roads where there were fewer of them.
There is nothing reprehensible here. The situation allowed, it was necessary to save people, equipment, armored vehicles, and cars as well. At least, after all, the political department of the 61st Infantry Division left the encirclement in a car. And not only the political department. According to available archival data, several dozen vehicles belonging to different units of the 63rd Infantry Division managed to break out of the encirclement.
You should not think that encirclement means the enemy is sitting behind every bush, and is waiting for those surrounded to make a breakthrough in this very place. This is a battle and it has its own laws: somewhere it’s thick, and somewhere it’s empty. Here who will outwit whom. It was also not easy for the enemy - it was necessary to liquidate the encircled group and continue the attack on Gomel. What about cars? Near Kharkov in May 1942, even several tanks broke through from encirclement, and the enemy had assembled much larger forces there; aviation literally hovered over our encircled units for days on end.
One way or another, after the battle northeast of Skepni, General Petrovsky’s group was scattered by the enemy. Chief of Staff of the Corps Colonel A.L. Feigin was captured; the chief of the corps artillery, Major General Kazakov, who was wounded in the stomach, was able to, as did General L.G. Petrovsky somehow escape from the enemy. By the way, it is possible that Kazakov received a wound in the stomach precisely at the moment when he had already managed to break away from the enemy, or even a little later. Only this can explain the fact that he managed to break through the enemy barrier north of Skepnya and accidentally reach a group of soldiers and commanders of the 154th Infantry Division led by General Fokanov.
As you can see, the day found General L.G. Petrovsky northeast of Skepnya, or more precisely on the side of the Skepnya - Rudenka road, 1 km south of the village of Rudenka, where he was accidentally discovered by German soldiers. Leonid Grigorievich, realizing that he, a Soviet general and the son of one of the leaders of the Soviet state (even a former one), could not be captured alive, took his last battle. Apparently, there were very few cartridges in the pistol’s clip, apparently two or three. Having killed one of the German soldiers in a shootout, Petrovsky, when the last cartridge remained, decided to shoot the last bullet into his temple. This is evidenced by the protocol of the medical expert commission, which, during the exhumation of Petrovsky’s body in August 1944, discovered a large star-shaped wound on Leonid Grigorievich’s left temple.
Approaching the deceased Soviet commander, the German soldier was surprised to find that he was wearing an overcoat with special insignia that he had never seen before. Soldier Schindekutte took off L.G.'s overcoat. Petrovsky, started the car, which was in perfect working order, and decided to report what had happened to his commander.
Having driven the car to Skepnya, near which General L.G. was killed. Petrovsky, Private Schindekutte reported to the commander of the anti-tank company of the 487th brigade, Lieutenant G.L. Bremer about what had happened, and showed him the general's overcoat, which he had brought with him.
Seeing the insignia of the senior command staff of the Red Army on the overcoat, G.L. Bremer took the overcoat and took it to regimental headquarters, reporting everything to the regimental commander, Colonel Hoecker. Having checked the insignia on the overcoat with the directory of insignia of the command staff of the Red Army, Colonel Hoecker was convinced that this was the overcoat of the highest command staff and ordered Lieutenant Bremer to deliver the soldier Schindekutte to him.
After a short conversation with him, Colonel Hoecker, Captain Behnke, Chief Lieutenant Bremer, Lieutenant Deigner and Private Schindekutte drove in the regiment commander's car to the place where, according to the latter, the Soviet general was killed. 2.5 km from Skepnya on the right side of the Skepnya - Rudenka road, 1 km south of the village of Rudenka, they saw the corpse of a serviceman with the same insignia on his tunic as on his overcoat.
During the search, Captain Benke found in the pocket of the dead man’s tunic a small red book, which turned out to be an identity card, with a photo card glued to it and the inscription “Lieutenant General Petrovsky Leonid Grigorievich” written on it. A map and some orders were found in his field bag.
The regiment commander, Colonel Hoecker, ordered the corpse to be buried in the same place and an inscription to be made above the grave that Lieutenant General Petrovsky was buried here. He did not look into the circumstances of the death of the commander of the 63rd Rifle Corps, although it could be easily determined that Petrovsky was not killed by a German soldier, but shot himself in the right temple, as clearly evidenced by a very large wound on the left side of Leonid Grigorievich’s face.
Returning to the headquarters at the regimental headquarters, where the chief of staff of the corps, Colonel A.L., was under guard, captured in the first half of the day. Feigin, he was shown the identity card found on the murdered person. Colonel Feigin confirmed that these documents indeed belong to the commander of the 63rd Rifle Corps, Lieutenant General L.G. Petrovsky.
By order of the commander of the 487th Regiment, Colonel Hoecker, the corpse of General Petrovsky was buried by German soldiers under the command of the officer of the 1st "C" regiment, Lieutenant Heinck, near the place where he died. Somewhat later, a wooden cross was installed on his grave, on which the inscription was made in Latin:
"HENERAL-LEITENANT PETROVSKIJ".
The version that at the grave of L.G. Petrovsky, a cross was installed with the inscription “Lieutenant General L.G. Petrovsky - commander of the black corps” was apparently born after the war due to a lack of information and to give a certain myth to the 63rd Rifle Corps, which the enemy was supposedly very afraid of.
This myth quickly spread across various print publications. Even the famous historian R.S. Irinarkhov, who always differs from the numerous writing brethren in the truthfulness and accuracy of the events described, did not avoid this, writing in his book “Western Special”, excellent in content, literally the following:
“Local residents buried the body of Lieutenant General L.G. Petrovsky, a kilometer south of the village of Rudenko. When the Germans occupied the village, they placed a cross on the grave of the brave general who had so annoyed them with the inscription “Lieutenant General Petrovsky, commander of the black corps.”
However, there was nothing of the kind. According to the stories of witnesses of those events, the 63rd sk was sometimes called “black” by the enemy, but this name took place, first of all, due to the fact that a significant part of the Red Army soldiers were from Central Asia. And the corps commander himself was dark and black-haired: remember how the chief of staff of the 437th infantry regiment B.G. described his appearance. Weintraub, during a meeting with him on August 15, 1941.
And Georgy Petrovich Kuleshov, who first saw General L.G. Petrovsky at the end of June 1941 described his appearance as follows:
“I had never seen him before. At first impression he seemed to me to be a Georgian, although I knew well that he was Ukrainian. A dark, slender man of about forty. Dark thick hair. A small, short-cropped mustache. The impression of extraordinary physical health.”
But this is not so important - who, what they looked like, who, what their name was. So to speak, in the form of a lyrical digression and in order to dot all the i’s.
When our troops liberated the outskirts of Zhlobin at the beginning of June 1944 and discovered the grave of the commander of the 63rd infantry regiment, Lieutenant General L.G. Petrovsky, there was no cross on it. According to local residents, the cross disappeared literally a few days before our troops arrived.
Chapter 15.
FOREVER IN PEOPLE'S MEMORY
On February 21-26, 1944, troops of the 1st Belorussian Front carried out the Rogachev-Zhlobin offensive operation, which resulted in the liberation of the 3rd Army by units and formations under the command of Lieutenant General A.V. Gorbatov with the support of pilots of the 16th Air Army Lieutenant General S.I. Rudenko of the city of Rogachev. However, Zhlobin was not captured. Hiding behind the Dnieper River, the enemy held the city in his hands, even despite the fact that our aviation constantly launched massive air strikes on its positions. The only thing that the units of the 48th Army of Colonel General P.L. managed to do. Romanenko, advancing in the Zhlobin direction, was to liberate the left bank part of the Zhlobin region from the enemy by the beginning of June.
At first, Commander-48 did not know that twenty kilometers southeast of Zhlobin, in the combat zone of the 42nd Rifle Corps, there was the village of RudenkaRuR, next to which General Petrovsky died in August 1941. Only when an order was received from the front headquarters to find the burial place of the commander of the 63rd infantry regiment, Lieutenant General L.G. Petrovsky, who died in the summer of 1941 somewhere in this area, Colonel General P.L. Romanenko remembered a young seventeen-year-old student at the military academy who interned with them in the 2nd brigade in the summer and autumn of 1919. At that time, they fought with the Mamontovites south of the city of Kalach, Voronezh region. Romanenko was the head of the intelligence unit of the headquarters, and Petrovsky came to train as the chief of staff of the brigade, and they then became fast friends. And now fate has brought them together again, but this was not the kind of meeting they dreamed of in those dashing years of their youth.
Soon the commander of the 42nd Rifle Corps, Lieutenant General S.K. Kolganov reported that the burial place of General L.G. had been discovered 1 km south of the village of Rudenka. Petrovsky, who until that time was officially considered missing.
On June 6, 1944, a special vehicle arrived in the village of Rudenka, in which, in addition to representatives of the Soviet command, there were several doctors. They had to exhume and identify the body of General Petrovsky. Local residents of the village of Rudenka S.A. Novikov, P.V. Bykov and S.I. Melnikov helped remove Petrovsky's remains from the grave. His remains were identified by people who knew Leonid Grigorievich well during his lifetime, including General V.I. Kazakov, who served before the war together with Leonid Grigorievich in the Proletarian Division.
Body of L.G. Petrovsky rested on a Red Army overcoat, and was covered with a raincoat on top. There were no insignia or orders on the summer wool commando tunic with red trim. If you remember, literally two days before his death, the chief of staff of the 437th rifle regiment of the 154th rifle division B.G. Weintraub saw L.G. Petrovsky with all the awards. It is unlikely that Leonid Grigorievich himself took off his orders and medals: he always looked smart and dashing, inspiring confidence in his subordinates with his appearance.
Insignia and awards - the Order of the Red Banner, the Red Star and the medal "XX Years of the Red Army" were missing. Apparently, they were removed from his chest during the arrival of a group of German officers to identify the corpse of General Petrovsky on the day of his death. It is possible that the awards were taken even earlier by the soldier Schindekutte, who brought the general’s overcoat to headquarters.
The commission chaired by Captain Justice F.P. Chulkova examined the corpse of General Petrovsky and stated:
“- On the skull and in the area of the parietal and left temporal bones there are violations of the integrity of the cranial cap of a star-shaped shape, measuring 10 by 18 centimeters -
Due to significant tissue disintegration, other damage to the body could not be determined.”
After the examination, the remains of Lieutenant General L.G. Petrovsky were buried in the same grave. The results of the work were reported to the Personnel Directorate of the Red Army, from where a day later permission was received to rebury the remains of General Petrovsky in the village of Staraya Rudnya, located five kilometers from Rudenka.
On June 13, 1944, his father Grigory Ivanovich, his wife Nadezhda Vasilievna with their daughter Olga and his sister Antonina, also with their daughter, arrived in Staraya Rudnya. They visited the very place where Leonid Grigorievich died. Moreover, according to the recollections of eyewitnesses, during this trip Grigory Ivanovich found a piece of his skull in the ground near the grave..."
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Reburial of the remains of soldiers of the 61st Infantry Division
in Ozerany, Rogachevsky district, Gomel region of Belarus.
February 24, 2007.
Formed near Moscow in March 1941.
As follows from the Certificate of training of assigned personnel in rifle divisions in 1941 (compiled by the Mob Directorate of the General Staff of the Red Army no later than 05/20/41), the rifle divisions of the Moscow Military District are the 73rd, 110th, 118th, 137th, 144th , 160th, 172nd, 229th, 233rd and 235th - had in peacetime staff No. 4/120 (i.e. 5.9 thousand people) For training, which was carried out with 05.15., 06.1 and 06.10.41, 6 thousand reservists were called up per division.
On June 22, 1941, the division became part of the 69SK (153, 229 and 233 Rifle Division) 20 A Reserve of the High Command. According to the secret order to transfer the armies of the internal districts to the Dnieper line, the corps was transferred to the Smolensk area, where it was supposed to arrive according to pre-war calculations on 06/25-03/07. The command of the 20th Army from the Oryol Military District also arrived in Smolensk.
The 69th SK Corps took up defense in the so-called “Smolensk Gate” - the area between the Dnieper and Western Dvina rivers. For a long time, enemy forces invaded Russia along this route. 69SK was commanded by Major General E. A. Mogilevchik
On June 22, 1941 was in the Moscow Military District. June 25-28, 1941 parts of the division were loaded onto trains in Kubinka and Mozhaisk with their destination Krasnoye near Smolensk.
07/03/1941 The 233rd Infantry Division concentrated in the area of Shnitki, Ponizovye, Sivitskie. By the end of July 4, 31ash had been unloaded. out of 33.
07/04/1941 233rd Infantry Division (commander - Colonel G.F. Kotov), without the 716th Gap, two battalions of the 734th Regiment, 68th Optadn, 383rd Special Regiment, 74th ab, - takes up defense at the line of Shily, Cossacks, Klyukovka. On the right were the positions of the 229th Rifle Division.
On the morning of July 6, units of the 5th and 7th MK went on the offensive in the direction of Lepel-Senno. The mechanized units operated without the support of the rifle divisions, which remained in their positions. The commanders of the 69SK rifle divisions were only instructed allocate at the disposal of mechanized corps commanders one strong infantry detachment in vehicles with artillery to consolidate their successes. The counterattack was generally unsuccessful. Our troops failed not to defeat the German troops that had rushed forward, nor to delay the German offensive for a long time. July 7, 69SK (153, 229, 233 Rifle Division), continued to hold and strengthen the line along the river. Luchesa, st. Flocks. The task of the corps was to prevent the enemy from breaking through to Vitebsk and Liozno.
On July 7, the enemy crossed the Western Dvina in the Ulla area and, developing an offensive along the northern bank of the river, broke into Vitebsk on July 9. Despite the counterattack on Vitebsk, which also included the right-flank formations of 69SK, on July 11, Vitebsk was captured. In the “Smolensk Gate” on July 12, the enemy’s 12th infantry division broke through at the junction of 229 and 233rd infantry divisions in the direction of Babinovichi, where the headquarters of the 69th Rifle Corps was located. The 233rd Infantry Division continued to hold the Kolenka line, Art. Flocks.
On July 15th the order arrives 233rd Infantry Regiment withdraw at least a rifle regiment with reinforcement to the Lyndino, Dobromysl area. The fact is that German tank divisions from the Vitebsk region broke deep into the rear of the troops of the Western Front, trying to encircle its units operating in the Vitebsk and Orsha region. On July 15-16, German troops captured Smolensk and cut the Minsk-Moscow highway in the Yartsevo area. Units of the 19th, 20th and 16th armies found themselves in operational encirclement to the west, north and east of Smolensk. However, the infantry divisions of Army Group Center were still far away and it was impossible to liquidate the cauldron with the help of one motorized formation scattered over a vast area. Communication with the semi-encircled troops existed through crossings of the Dnieper in the area of Ratchino and Solovyevo.
From July 16, under the attacks of the 5AK infantry divisions (5 and 35pd), units of the 69SK retreated to Smolensk through Rudnya. On July 18, the division was withdrawn to the army reserve in the Dvorishche, Lemyashi area.
On July 21, 69SK (229 and 233rd Rifle Division) held the line Urochishche, Bolshoy Chastik, river. Small Berezina, r. Radomsky Moss, Dubrovka.
On July 23, the division was withdrawn to the army reserve in the area northwest of Smolensk, and on July 25 it received an order to move out of the reserve and prevent the enemy from breaking through from the north to Smolensk in the Penisnar area. Until July 30, it operated in the Smugulino, Porfilovo area (north of Smolensk).
In connection with the decision to withdraw units of the 16th and 20th armies beyond the Dnieper, from August 2, the division breaks through to crossings in the Ratchino area, because It was not possible to break through to Yartsevo along the Minsk Highway. During the breakthrough to the crossings and the crossing of the Dnieper itself on August 3-5, the division suffered heavy losses. The division commander, Colonel Kotov, was captured (according to other sources, he went missing).
The plan of the Soviet command: to dismember the opposing enemy group and defeat it piece by piece. The main blow was planned to be delivered from the Magnushevsky bridgehead in the direction of Kutsh Poznan by the forces of the 61st, 5th Shock 8th Guards. A, 1st 2nd Guards A and 2nd Guards. kk. To develop success in the main direction, the 3rd Shock Army was intended. Auxiliary strikes were to be launched from the Pclav bridgehead in the direction of Radom, Lodz 69th and 33rd A and 7th Guards. kk, north of Warsaw - 47th Army. The 1st Army of the Polish Army received the task of launching an offensive on the 4th day of the operation and in cooperation with the troops of the 47th, 61st Army and 2nd Guards. TA to defeat the Warsaw resistance group and capture Warsaw.
The Warsaw-Poznan offensive operation began on January 14 with a surprise attack by the leading battalions from both bridgeheads on a front over 100 km; within an hour they advanced 2-3 km without encountering organized resistance. The troops of the 5th Shock and 8th Guards A, which then went on the offensive, advanced up to 12 km by the end of the day, and the troops of the 61st A crossed the river across the ice. Pilica and wedged into the enemy’s defenses to a depth of 3 km. 69th and 33rd A, 9th and 11th Tank Corps broke through enemy defenses to a depth of 20 km. 15 Jan formations of the 1st Guards TA reached the river. Pilica. By the morning of January 16, the 11th and 9th TCs liberated Radom. The 47th A, going on the offensive on January 16, drove the enemy beyond the Vistula and immediately crossed it north of Warsaw. On the same day, in the zone of the 5th Shock A, the 2nd Guards TA was introduced into the breakthrough, which, having made a rapid rush of 80 km in one day, reached the Sokhachev district and cut off the escape routes for the Warsaw enemy group. On January 17, troops of the 47th and 61st A, together with the 1st A of the Polish Army, liberated Warsaw. During the 4 days of the offensive, the troops of the 1st Belorussian Front defeated the main forces of the enemy's 9A, broke through its defenses to the entire operational depth, advancing 100-130 km. The offensive of the troops was actively supported by the aviation of the 16th VA, which struck at enemy strongholds in front of the front of the advancing troops, as well as at enemy troops and communications centers in the depths of their defense. On the morning of January 18, front troops began a decisive pursuit of the enemy.
On January 19, Lodz was liberated. By January 22, the tank armies reached the Poznan defensive line. On January 23, units of the 2nd Guards TA liberated the city of Bydgoszcz. Bypassing the Poznan fortress from the south, the capture of which was entrusted to the rifle corps of the 8th Guards and 69th A, 1st Guards TA crossed the river on January 25. Varta and rushed to the river. Oder. On January 26, the tank armies reached the old German-Polish border. On January 28, the 2nd Guards TA immediately broke through the Pomeranian Wall. Following it were the 3rd and 5th Shock, 61st and 47th A, 1st A Polish Army, 2nd Guards KK, which completed the breakthrough and started fighting west of the Pomeranian Wall. On January 29, troops of the 1st Guards TA, 8th Guards, 33rd and 69th A, having broken through the Mezeritsky UR, entered the territory of Nazi Germany. On January 31, the advanced units of the 2nd Guards TA and 5th Shock A reached the river. Oder. By the end of February 3, the troops of the center and left wing of the front cleared the right bank of the Oder from the enemy in a 100 km strip south of Tseden and captured bridgeheads north and south of Küstrin on the left bank. At this time, the enemy was concentrating large forces in Pomerania (Army Group Vistula) for a strike in a southern direction. The commander of the 1st Belorussian Front opposed them with 4 combined arms, 2 tank armies and a cavalry. frame.
In the Berlin direction there remained 4 combined arms armies weakened in previous battles, 2 tank and 1 cavalry. frame. Due to the danger of a counterattack from the north, as well as due to the lag in the rear and the relocation of aviation, the continuation of the offensive on Berlin was considered inappropriate and, at the direction of the Supreme High Command Headquarters, was stopped.
The Warsaw-Poznan offensive operation is one of the largest front-line operations carried out during the war. Having started a breakthrough in several areas with a total width of 34 km, by the end of the operation the troops of the 1st Belorussian Front expanded it along the front to 500 km and advanced to a depth of 500 km, liberating the entire western part of Poland in their zone.
Capture of Poznan Fortress
(01/23/1945-02/23/1945)
On the night of January 22, the forward detachments of the 1st Guards Tank Army approached the outskirts of Poznan and tried to immediately break into the city, but the garrison repelled their attacks. The commander of the 1st Belorussian Front, Marshal Zhukov, decided not to delay the tank army near Poznan, but to blockade the city with the forces of the 8th Guards and 69th Army Generals Chuikov and Kolpakchi. Each army allocated a rifle corps and reinforcements for the blockade.
Poznań was a classic fortress. Forts in the center, in the main defense center of the Citadel. Both the forts and the Citadel are entirely underground structures. Huge shelters were equipped underground, which housed a large garrison. Reconnaissance and questioning of prisoners showed that in Poznan all its forts and the center of the entire defense of the fortress - the Citadel - were prepared for defense.
It was established that the garrison of the city, together with the Volkssturm battalions, numbered up to 60,000 people and consisted of 2 cadet schools, a reserve training division of assault guns, 11 security battalions, airfield service units, a training air regiment, 2 officer schools, 2 sapper battalions, and a Lenzer combat group. from local SS men, 17 companies from vacation soldiers and soldiers of the 10th motorized, 6th, 45th, 251st infantry divisions, defeated in previous battles.
The group was commanded by Colonel Connel. He took over the garrison from Major General of Police Mattern, who had been removed from this post for lack of combat experience. Mattern remained in Poznań. The day before, Connel received the rank of general.
Fulfilling Hitler's will, the garrison command decided to hold the city to the last soldier.
Hitler's headquarters attached great importance to holding the fortresses of Poznan, Schneidemuhl and Breslau, as strategic points covering operational directions into the depths of Germany.
Assault units of the 39th Guards Rifle Division began an assault on the outskirts and northern forts of Poznan on the morning of January 26. The main blow was delivered from the south by the 27th and 74th Guards Rifle Divisions. As a result, two southern forts on the western bank of the Warta fell into the hands of the attackers; troops with tanks broke into the ring of forts and attacked the enemy from the inside of his forts.
The attack from the north by units of the 39th Guards Rifle Division was unsuccessful. By January 27, a weakened 91st Rifle Corps of the 69th Army. January 28 4 divisions of the 8th Guards and 2 divisions of the 69th armies repeated the assault. Heavy bloody battles ensued for the bunkers and forts of the fortress. An equally stubborn struggle took place on the streets of the city for every house turned into a stronghold. The assault groups drove the Germans out of their strongholds in fierce battles.
By February 5, assault groups had completely cleared the city's residential areas of the enemy. Citadel, eastern part of the district (Shuling), Khvalishchevo and Glovno were still under siege. The assault did not stop for a minute, neither day nor night. After February 12, the assault on the Citadel, located on a hill and dominating the entire area, began. As our troops approached it, the tenacity of the enemy's resistance increased.
Near the Citadel there was a railway junction, which was extremely necessary for the supply of supplies to all front troops. Therefore, the assault on the Citadel continued until the enemy was completely eliminated in it. For several days the attacks by our units stopped. They rested, ammunition and heavy artillery were brought up.
The assault on the Citadel began on February 18. A 5-meter gap was made in the walls of the Citadel with artillery fire. Heavy 152.4 mm and 203.2 mm guns fired direct fire at embrasures and loopholes. The assault groups brought the sappers of the 261st separate engineer battalion to the walls of the Citadel and they began to blow up the embrasures with powerful explosive charges. On the night of February 22, assault groups and tanks of the 251st tank and 34th heavy tank regiments burst into the courtyard of the Citadel through the gap. The garrison, driven into the dungeons, held out for about another day and capitulated on February 23.