How and when the Great Patriotic War began. Causes of the 1941 catastrophe

Most modern schoolchildren know when the Great Patriotic War began. They also know the date of the attack on Poland: 1939, September 1. It turns out that for a year and a half between these two events nothing special happened in our country, people just went to work, met dawns over the Moscow River, sang Komsomol songs, well, sometimes they even allowed themselves to dance tango and foxtrot. Such a nostalgic idyll.

In fact, the picture created by hundreds of movies, apparently, is somewhat different from the realities of that time. The whole people of the Soviet Union did not work as they do now. Then there were no image-makers, office managers and merchandisers, only specific cases related to the production of items necessary for the country were considered work. Mainly - weapons. This situation existed not one year, but when the Great Patriotic War began, it just became even harder.

On that Sunday morning, when German troops attacked our borders, something that was inevitable happened, but it did not happen as expected. Do not rumble fire, did not shine steel combat vehicles, going on a furious campaign. Huge stocks of weapons, food, medicines, fuel and other necessary military cargoes were destroyed or captured by the advancing Germans. The planes concentrated on the adjacent airfields close to the borders were burned on the ground.

To the question: "When did the Great Patriotic War begin?" - it would be more correct to answer: "July 3". I.V. Stalin called her that way during her radio address to the Soviet people, "brothers and sisters." However, this term was mentioned in the newspaper Pravda on the second and third days after the attack, but then it was not taken seriously, it was a direct analogy with the First World War and Napoleonic wars.

Numerous connoisseurs of the history of the Great Patriotic War undeservedly pay little attention to its initial period, characterized as the largest military catastrophe for the entire time of human existence. The number of irretrievable losses and captured prisoners was estimated at millions, huge territories were at the mercy of the occupants together with the population living on them and the industrial potential that had to be quickly disrupted or evacuated.

Nazi hordes were able to reach the Volga, it took them a little more than a year. During the First World Austro-Hungarian and German troops did not penetrate deep into the "backward and lapotal" Russian Empire beyond the Carpathians.

From the moment when the Great Patriotic War began, until the liberation of the entire Soviet land passed about three years, filled with grief, blood and death. More than a million citizens who were captured and caught up in the occupation moved to the side of the invaders, from them divisions and armies entered into the Wehrmacht were formed. About anything similar during the First World and speech could not go.

Because of the enormous human and material losses of the USSR, after the Great Patriotic War, it experienced enormous difficulties, manifested in the famine of 1947, general impoverishment of the population and devastation, the consequences of which are felt to some extent now.