Steganography & travel. The Vyazemsky “cauldron” is a little-known page in the history of the war The war does not want to go away

Once again I draw attention to the fact that in this case Lukin already deserved to be shot in front of the army. Both for the actual refusal to attempt to break out of encirclement, for the disintegration of military discipline and the unauthorized dissolution of units, and for failure to comply with the order of Headquarters on leading a breakthrough from encirclement by four armies, order No. 270 of August 16, 1941, etc. I personally am very It is difficult to understand one thing - is it really possible that among the entire command staff there was not a single more or less decent person to immediately shoot Lukin and his entire camarilla as real traitors and traitors to the Motherland?! Where were the Special Department, the military prosecutor, and the military tribunal looking?! After all, the lives of a whole million people entrusted to them, and especially the fate of the capital, were at stake!

So the question arises: is it not this genuine, extremely unsightly truth about the true origin of the tragedy of the Vyazemsky “cauldron” that Lukin had in mind, who had become considerably emboldened after the murder of Stalin, who, in the euphoria of victory and due to Lukin’s disability - his leg was amputated in captivity - simply took pity above him and didn’t put him against the wall?! Is this why Lukin so famously shifted all the blame onto Konev and Budyonny?! After all, the most The best way hide your betrayal - blame others for the tragedy! No one argues that they were to blame, but they were to blame for the clumsy leadership of the hostilities. But for what happened in the encirclement, Lukin had to personally answer for this and only at the execution wall. After all, only near Vyazma 37 divisions, 9 tank brigades, 31 artillery regiments of the High Command reserve and field departments of four armies were destroyed! The Germans, with only 28 divisions, surrounded 37 of our divisions, 9 tank brigades, 31 artillery regiments of the High Command reserve and field departments of four armies! And a few days later the Teutons left only 14 divisions and our 37 divisions, 9 tank brigades, 31 artillery regiments of the High Command reserve and field departments of four armies surrendered without a murmur, like sheep, without being defeated! Moreover. Can anyone intelligibly explain what Stalin and Headquarters have to do with it, if the decision expressed in Lukin’s order was not even communicated to Headquarters, if Lukin did not find it necessary to respond to the latest requests from Headquarters?!

Maybe stop blaming everything on Stalin and Headquarters with manic fanaticism?! Maybe it’s time to finally ask at least something from our “valiant” wartime generals and marshals?! How long can you denigrate the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, the Headquarters and the General Staff, led by the wisest ace Marshal Shaposhnikov, and make them guilty for any reason, and most often, for no reason?!

Notes:

Halford J. MacKinder. The Round World and the Winning of the Peace. Foreign Affairs, July 1943.

For more details on this issue, see the excellent book, superbly argued with declassified documents from the SVR, GRU, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Stalin Foundation, the Comintern and other previously completely unknown documentary materials Yuri Tikhonov « Afghan war Stalin. The Battle for Central Asia." M., 2008.

Lopukhovsky L. Vyazma disaster of 1941. M., 2007, p. 557.

Mukhin Yu. I. If it weren't for the generals. Problems of the military class. M... 2006. pp. 198–204.

bag for vacuum packaging.

The Japanese name for Japan, Nihon (日本), consists of two parts - ni (日) and hon (本), both of which are Sinicisms. The first word (日) in modern Chinese is pronounced rì and, as in Japanese, means “sun” (represented in writing by its ideogram). The second word (本) in modern Chinese is pronounced bӗn. Its original meaning is "root", and the ideogram representing it is the ideogram of the tree mù (木) with a dash added at the bottom to indicate the root. From the meaning of “root” the meaning of “origin” developed, and it was in this sense that it entered the name of Japan Nihon (日本) – “origin of the sun” > “land of the rising sun” (modern Chinese rì bӗn). In ancient Chinese, the word bӗn (本) also had the meaning of “scroll, book.” In modern Chinese it is replaced in this sense by the word shū (書), but remains in it as a counting word for books. The Chinese word bӗn (本) was borrowed into Japanese both in the sense of "root, origin" and in the sense of "scroll, book", and in the form hon (本) meaning book and in modern Japanese. The same Chinese word bӗn (本) meaning “scroll, book” was also borrowed into the ancient Turkic language, where, after adding the Turkic suffix -ig, it acquired the form *küjnig. The Türks brought this word to Europe, where it from the language of the Danube Turkic-speaking Bulgars in the form knig entered the language of the Slavic-speaking Bulgarians and spread through Church Slavonic to other Slavic languages, including Russian.

Thus, Russian word book and the Japanese word hon "book" have common root of Chinese origin, and the same root is included as the second component in the Japanese name for Japan Nihon.

I hope everything is clear?)))

There are many pages on which the medal-laden authors of “memoirs and reflections” did not like to stop their and the reader’s attention. Although there was something to think about, I didn’t want to remember. The reasons are clear - these pages are terrible and shameful.

One of these unfamiliar stories is the story of the Vyazemsky “cauldron”. Few people know how much more terrible it is than, for example, the battle on the Volga.

From any history textbook, even a Soviet one, it is known that at Stalingrad the Wehrmacht lost Paulus, consisting of twenty-two divisions. So, the Red Army at Vyazma suffered somewhat greater losses. A group consisting of three armies was surrounded, the losses amounted, according to the most conservative estimates, to 380,000 people killed, 600,000 Red Army soldiers were captured. The number of divisions that fell into the Vyazemsky “cauldron” and ceased to exist is 37. Nine tank brigades, thirty-one artillery regiments of the reserve of the High Command were completely destroyed.

But that's not all. The Vyazma disaster had its consequences: the destruction of such a large military group opened German troops the direct road to Moscow, which had to be urgently blocked by militia forces and cadets, poorly trained and equally poorly armed. Almost all of them died, adding five-digit figures to the mournful treasury of losses of our people in the war.

The fighting near Vyazma began in October 1941. The Soviet command guessed that the German General Staff was planning a major offensive, but expected it between the 19th and 16th armies, where the forces that later ended up in the Vyazemsky “cauldron” were concentrated. This was a mistake; the enemy struck to the south and north, from the cities of Roslavl and Dukhovshchina, bypassing the defensive positions of the Soviet troops Western Front and surrounding them. As a result of this classic enveloping maneuver, a high concentration of troops was created in narrow sectors of the front, and the Germans managed to break through the extended defenses of the Soviet troops.

Marshall G.K. Zhukov, who commanded the Western Front from October 10, 1941, in his memoirs presented the Vyazemsky “cauldron” as a not very significant episode of his heroic biography, pointing out that the encircled group pinned down enemy troops around itself for a long time. It really was like that. Having lost supplies, communications and command, the Soviet divisions fought to the last. Only this did not last long, and soon columns of thousands of prisoners began to dust along the roads. Their fate is not just sad, it is terrible. In the camps, most of our soldiers and officers died from hunger, cold and disease, and those who survived were branded with the shame of captivity and, for the most part, after the war they again ended up in camps, this time Soviet ones.

The battle of Vyazma took place seventy-two years ago, and the remains of many thousands of soldiers who defended our Motherland still lie in unknown graves, cars drive on them, people walk on them, those who know the truth. For a long time it was believed that it was better to forget her.

Yes, the Vyazemsky “cauldron” became a disgrace, and not the only one during the war, but it does not fall on the fallen heroes or those who died in captivity. For the most part, they honestly fulfilled their task. Those who did not want to tell the truth about the war and forbade it to others knew whose shame it was.

We, living today, need to remember our grandfathers and great-grandfathers who did not return from the war.

On October 2, 1941, the offensive of German tank strike groups began in the northern direction towards Moscow. Hoepner's 4th Panzer Group struck at the junction of the 43rd and 50th Armies. At 6 o'clock in the morning, after a 4-minute artillery barrage, the offensive began. Big role The German Air Force played a role in preventing the transfer of army reserves to the breakthrough site. At first, the Germans advanced along the Warsaw Highway, then turned towards Vyazma.

At the same time, units of the 3rd Panzer Group of Hoth were advancing(since October 5, 1941, it was headed by General Georg Reinhardt). The Germans hit the junction of the 30th and 19th armies– 45 km section of the front. All 3rd Panzer Divisions of the German Panzer Group (TG) were advancing in the first echelon. On the first day the Germans broke through the defenses in the Dukhshchinsky and Roslavl directions, wedged into the defense of Soviet troops at 15-30 km. On October 3, the depth of advance of German units in the Western Front was up to 50 kilometers, and that of the Reserve Front - up to 80 kilometers.

Our troops launched a counterattack, for this purpose they formed the group of I.V. Boldin. The task force struck on October 4-5 in the Kholm-Zhirkovsky area. A tank battle took place. But Boldin’s group failed to complete the task - the forces were unequal. The German 7th Tank Division broke through the Dnieper positions of the Rzhev-Vyazma defense line, and then to the highway west of Vyazma. On October 7, the Germans surrounded Vyazma(7th Panzer Division of the 3rd TG and 10th Panzer Division of the 4th TG).

Environment map

This became one of the darkest days of the terrible 1941. On October 4, Konev reported to Headquarters “about the threat of a large group of Germans coming to the rear of our troops.” On October 5, the commander of the Reserve Front, Budyonny, announced this. Units of the 19th, 20th, 24th, 32nd armies and the Boldin group were surrounded. On October 8, Konev ordered to break through surrounded troops in the Gzhatsk region. The encircled troops fought until October 13, making repeated attempts to break through, but were unsuccessful. So on the 10th, the 20th Army of Lieutenant General F.A. Ershakov made a breakthrough; the battle was fierce and lasted all day. As a result, 5 army divisions were completely destroyed (General Ershakov was captured on November 2). On October 11, north of Vyazma, the forces of the 19th and 32nd armies and the group of General Boldin under the command of Army Commander Lukin tried to break through. Only On the 12th we managed to make a hole in the German defenses, but it was not possible to strengthen the flanks, The Germans quickly closed the breakthrough, only part of the formations were able to escape. Among the fighters who came out was Boldin.

Results:

• The troops surrounded near Vyazma pinned down significant enemy forces, intended to pursue the remaining defeated forces of the Western and Reserve Fronts and develop the offensive. Only on October 14 was the German command able to regroup the main forces and launch a new general offensive on the 15th.
• German troops broke through the defense line of the Western and Reserve Fronts to the entire operational depth, and were able to encircle and destroy a significant part of the forces of the Western and Reserve Fronts. The Germans reached the Mozhaisk defense line capital Cities Soviet Union, creating the necessary conditions to continue Operation Typhoon.
• The Red Army suffered huge losses, according to some data – More than 600 thousand people were captured alone. In the Vyazma "cauldron" the commander of the 19th Army, Lieutenant General M.F. Lukin and the commander of the 32nd Army, Major General S.V. Vishnevsky, were captured, the commander of the 24th Army, Major General K.I. Rakutin, was killed .

“Vyazma! Vyazma! Who will forget her? I served in our Red Army for dozens of years, I was in battles, I saw the sights!.. but what everyone had to experience near Vyazma was the first time. Day and night our divisions beat the enemy. And how they beat me to death. The wounded refused to leave the battle. More and more fighters took the place of the fallen. Everything around was on fire... Then our soldiers blocked the road to Moscow with their breasts.”

Marshal of the Soviet Union I. S. Konev

Two points of view

October 7-12 this year marks the 65th anniversary of the tragedy of our army and the Moscow militia near Vyazma.

However, disputes still do not subside about what happened west of Vyazma in early October 1941. The Red Army troops surrounded in the Vyazma cauldron delayed the Wehrmacht for two weeks and thereby saved Moscow, or will the tragedy that took place near Vyazma forever remain in history as a fact of military shame for the “invincible and legendary”?

Yuri Alexandrov, participant in the Battle of Vyazma, architectural historian:

— On October 2, 1941, the German command began implementing a plan to capture Moscow. It began with the battle for Vyazma. Two tank columns of Army Group "Center", having broken through the defense line east of the Bug and east of Smolensk, united in the Vyazma area, closing a huge "cauldron". Five hit him Soviet armies, about 500 thousand prisoners were captured, up to a million died Soviet soldiers and officers. During the last battle on the Bogoroditsky field, the commander of the troops was seriously wounded and captured Lieutenant General M. F. Lukin.

But one of the biggest defeats of the Red Army became its strategic victory. From memory Marshal Zhukov, as a result of the active actions of the units surrounded near Vyazma, it was possible to gain time, build a defense around Moscow and bring up fresh reserve troops from Siberia.

Ivan Syomushkin, participant in the battle of Vyazma, builder:

“I am deeply convinced that the Vyazemsky cauldron in the fall of 1941 is a military tragedy that has no precedent in history. Miscalculations by the command and the general situation at the front led to the fact that Vyazma became a city of military shame. According to data published in the press, in the Vyazma area 37 divisions, 9 tank brigades, 31 artillery regiments of the RGK and 4 field army commands were surrounded (within a short period of time, a million-strong group of Red Army troops ceased to exist). Soviet troops lost about 6 thousand guns and over 1200 tanks. However, since we have always liked to distort unpleasant facts and gloss over reality, I am sure that there were significantly more losses...

Eyewitnesses testify

Viktor Rozov, gun crew member. Subsequently, a famous playwright, screenwriter: “Forever Alive”, “The Cranes Are Flying”, etc.:

- ...Armament - antediluvian guns of the last century, 76-mm cannons of the last century, all horse-drawn. We are, one might say, naked, and they are made of iron. Iron moved towards us. How they fired at us - motorcycles, tanks! And we have a 76 mm gun...

Red Army soldier Sofin, machine gunner. After the war he worked as a leading designer of mining equipment:

— Tanks came out of the village... It seems that here we experienced real fear, because we practically had nothing to fight the tanks with, except, of course, bottles with flammable liquid. Unlike KS (a spontaneously combustible mixture that appeared later), they were ignited using two finger-thick matches pressed to the bottle with rubber rings. Before throwing, you had to run matches along the sulfur grater, and then throw the bottle into the tank. However, fortunately for us, the tanks suddenly stopped, unable to cross the small river with steep banks that separated us.

Alexandra Ryumina, medical instructor. After the war she worked at the Trekhgornaya Manufactory:

- ...This place - Korobets - is well known. This is the largest mass grave of the 8th Division. They dug the grave at night so that the Germans would not suspect anything (there was an order not to bury it, but to burn it and send the ashes to Germany for fertilizer). Our fighters were buried by schoolchildren and adult village residents. Throughout October, the bodies of dead soldiers were transported on wooden troughs. The Elnin residents, thanks to them, made a monument. 1400 people lie here.

Grigory Sitnik, militiaman:

“On the evening of October 4, the commissar of the artillery regiment (975th) called me and ordered me to lead the group, including the headquarters battery, and take me 15 km to the rear, where our division was supposed to gather at new lines. The specified rear group also included personnel serving four 120-mm mechanized howitzers. These howitzers arrived to us on the march. They were factory lubricated and without a single shell for them! Our group drove 15 km to the rear in vehicles, and there a representative of the division headquarters gave instructions to move to the northeast another 40 km. In the new place in the early morning of October 5, there was no longer any representative of the division or regiment. We were left to our own devices. The village we entered seemed to be extinct. The population hid, army warehouses were open and unguarded. Everything indicated a very hasty withdrawal of those units that were in the village earlier. After consulting with the head of the regiment's rear services, I decided that the group should move to Vyazma, where we would try to find a division or our group would be attached to another active unit. It was also decided to move only in the evening, night and morning hours of the day. When leaving the indicated village, our vehicles were fired upon by enemy mortar fire. We responded with rifle fire directly from moving vehicles. We left under fire. It was hard to see how people, military equipment, tanks, and artillery were rolling back to the east in a continuous stream, which was interrupted only by enemy bombing. There was no sense of control. The parts and connections are mixed up."

In his memoirs, Sitnik cites an almost anecdotal incident. Near Yukhnov he met a general (whom he later recognized as Zhukov). Sitnik turned to him with a question where to find the 8th rifle division. To which he replied: “Young man, we don’t know where the armies are, but you’re talking about the division.

Boris Runin, militiaman. Writer:

— Many soldiers ended their lives in German captivity. The task of the Germans was to destroy the manpower of the USSR in general and prisoners of war in particular. Unbearable conditions were created for the existence of prisoners. On the way to the camp they were not fed anything. They ate cabbage leaves, roots, and ears of rye from unharvested roadside fields that they found along the way. They drank water from road puddles. Stopping at wells or asking peasants for a drink was strictly prohibited. So, for five days - from October 9 to October 13, 1941 - they drove a column of prisoners to the Dorogobuzh camp. The column was accompanied by a vehicle on which four coaxial machine guns were installed. On the way, in one of the villages, under the stove of a burnt house, the prisoners saw half-burnt potatoes. About 200 people rushed after her. Four machine guns opened fire directly into the crowd. Several dozen prisoners died. Along the way, the prisoners rushed into the fields with undug potatoes, and machine gun fire immediately opened.

The wounded suffered severely from thirst. It was possible to obtain, and even then with great difficulty, one or two tablespoons of water per day only for the seriously wounded. His parched lips were cracking and his tongues were swollen from thirst. There is no medical care, medicines and dressings are missing. For a ward with 160 wounded they are given two bandages a day. Dressings are not done for a month. When the bandage is removed, the wounds are filled with worms, which are removed by the handful. Frostbitten limbs looked like black stumps, meat and bones fell off in black pieces. Many limbs froze right there in the wards. There is no iodine for those undergoing surgery; it is replaced with glysol. The wounded rotted alive and died in terrible agony. Many begged to be shot and thus spared their suffering. The smell of rotting meat and the cadaverous stench of the uncleaned dead fill the chambers. Mortality in the camp from hunger, cold, disease and executions reached 3-4 percent per day. This means that within a month the entire prison population died out. Over two and a half autumn months - October, November and part of December - together with the civilian prisoners who made up the majority, 8,500 people died in the camp, that is, more than 100 people on average per day. During the winter months, between 400 and 600 people died daily. Every day 30-40 long drays were loaded with the corpses of the dead and frozen. In the piles of corpses stacked like firewood near the barracks, there were also living ones. Often in these stacks arms and legs moved, eyes opened, lips whispered: “I’m still alive.” The dying were buried along with the dead...

“You did everything right, mom”

He called the tragedy that took place in October 1941 near Vyazma “Russian Calvary”, Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad.

Nowadays, the time has come to “gather stones.” In the village of Martyukhi, where the most fierce battles took place, on the initiative of local residents and with their private donations, a wooden church was built in the name of the Great Martyr Theodore Stratilates. In the temple, more than two thousand soldiers are constantly commemorated “for the faith, people and Fatherland killed in battle,” whose names were sent by their relatives from different parts of our Fatherland from Kaliningrad to Kamchatka.

Several years ago, a trench of our mortar crew was discovered seventy meters from the temple. 67 unused mines and 15 fuses were found next to the bodies of the dead mortarmen. In memory of the mortarmen, a six-meter worship cross was installed and consecrated. In total, six such worship crosses have been installed at the battle site today.

Who is doing this holy work? Who built the Orthodox church in Martyukhi? Who installs worship crosses? Meet: Hieromonk Father Daniil (Sychev) And nun Mother Angelina (Nesterova).

“I was born in 1944, so I know about the war and the events that unfolded in these places from my parents,” recalls Mother Angelina. — The Vazuzka river flows nearby. So my mother told me that in the spring of 1942, the Germans drove all the village residents every morning for a month to catch the corpses of Soviet soldiers. Although catching is not entirely true. The corpses of soldiers lay in layers. They removed the top, slightly thawed layer, dug a ditch, buried it, then the next layer... How many of them there were, these layers one on top of the other, is incomprehensible to the human mind.

- Mother Angelina, in your past life, so to speak, you were a doctor of biological sciences, director of the Latvian branch of the Institute of Cybernetics, and suddenly such a sharp turn in fate - a nun.

- Yes, it was such a sin. For many years I have been modeling genetic processes. Now, as a nun, I think it’s better for a person not to do this, but then I really liked my work. All conscious creative life I dedicated myself to solving this problem. This is probably why it was very difficult to accept the fact that I had been doing harmful and dangerous things all my life. Previously, when they told me about this, I answered: if it weren’t for me, someone else would still be doing it. But now I understand: well, let someone else do it. Then it would be his sin.

— In what year did you return from Latvia to your homeland?

- In 1992. A lot of things coincided here: my mother became seriously ill. Latvia announced its withdrawal from the USSR. Different times were beginning: it was necessary to define oneself, to understand one’s place in this time. Although spiritually, I think, nothing has changed, the material environment and the position of each person in this material environment have changed. I was offered a very lucrative contract: to go and work in Germany for 10 years. But... Apparently, there was Divine Providence. I returned to my homeland.

Here it is necessary to make a small digression: my father came from a family of hereditary carpenters, he came from the war disabled, without an arm, and until his death he lamented that there would be no one to continue the family’s work - to build houses. There were two girls in the family - me and my younger sister. “Eh, girls, what good are you,” the father grieved, “you won’t even build a house.” And so in 1989, in memory of my father, I decided to build a house in his native village, where by that time there was not a single living soul left. It was not clear to me why I would build it; I was still living in Latvia. And my mother said: why do you need a house in Martyukhi? He will stand alone in an open field. They will burn him... However, again, the Providence of the Lord is completely inscrutable. In 1992, when I came to live here, the house came in handy.

Naturally, there was no work here in my specialty, and one of my friends advised me to apply to the Vyazemsky Monastery. I was surprised: what would I do in a monastery, especially a monastery? It turned out there was a wonderful abbot there Abbot Arkady, who created a center for spiritual enlightenment. This center also found something for me. There, in the monastery, I met Father Daniel.

In 1995, the priests of the Vyazemsky Monastery were distributed among parishes, and I received a blessing from Father Arkady to help Father Daniil. And in 1996, Father Daniil and I began to build a temple. I turned to Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad: so, they say, and so, Vladyka, in memory of the tragic events of the Vyazma cauldron, we want to build a temple at our own expense on our own land, for which we ask for your blessing. Can you imagine, some secular woman, I was not yet tonsured, from a remote village asking for blessings for the construction of a temple?! But, apparently, there was God’s mercy, the bishop blessed.

It took four years to build the temple, literally with the whole world. We didn’t have millionaire sponsors; ordinary people donated money.

—Whose idea was it to install Orthodox crosses at the battle sites?

- Father Daniel. We don’t have funds for expensive, pompous monuments, so the priest came up with the idea of ​​​​making six-meter Orthodox crosses. Our Father Daniel is not only a priest, he is also a wonderful artist. He makes these crosses himself.

— Mother Angelina, if possible, a few words about the family.

- I have one son. Lives in Latvia. Graduated medical school with honors, but is engaged in private entrepreneurship and advertising, which is why I suffer a lot. True, a lot of things were built here with his money. And her husband died early, and she raised her son almost alone.

— And how did your son react to your decision to change your life so dramatically?

— At first I reacted very badly, I was categorically against it. And this year in August he came here and for the first time said: “You did everything right, mom.”

The war doesn't want to go away

Twenty years ago, on the initiative father of Alexander Klimenkov, then the secretary of the party committee of the Dnepropetrovsky state farm (AiF. Long-Liver will tell about the fate of this amazing man in one of the upcoming issues), the first Memory Field in the country was created on Vyazma land.

“In 1985, during the construction of a pig-breeding complex in the village of Kaidakovo, an excavator dug up the remains of four of our soldiers,” says Father Alexander. “We solemnly reburied them at the Eternal Flame. And then the remains of 29 more fighters were found, then 17, then another and another, and we realized that there were thousands, tens of thousands of unburied remains in this field. And there won’t be enough space at the Eternal Flame.

This is how the idea of ​​creating a Memory Field was born. For this, at the field office of the regional committee they wanted to expel me from the party. We didn’t like to talk about defeats. IN Battle of Stalingrad Half as many of our soldiers died, but there was victory. And here is defeat. So for many years the feat of the people who performed the miracle of sacrifice, without which there would have been neither the Moscow Battle nor the Battle of Stalingrad, was hushed up.

October 7-12 marks the 65th anniversary of those distant events. But the war doesn’t want to go away. Several years ago, six boys, students of Kaidakovskaya high school, found a shell from the Second World War and threw it into the fire. For fifty years the deadly metal lay in the ground, but did not lose its terrible destructive power. The explosion killed 6 children: Misha Semyonov, Oleg Novikov, Misha Melnikov, Seryozha Kudryavtsev, Dima and Denis Fomochkin. A monument was also erected to them on the Field of Memory. The war thus continues. And it will continue as long as its deadly legacy continues, maiming and killing people, especially children. I wrote a song in memory of these boys.

Here every evening in a terrible place


But he doesn’t want to go back.
Oh boys, oh boys!
How short the summer was.
All the horrors of the returning war
The early dawns were extinguished with an explosion.
How the damp fire didn’t want to burn.
The body of a rusty shell slid.
Six boys defying fate
They fell from shrapnel hail.
How I wanted to capture the war
For the long tail of her bony death.
So that it goes to me, not the boy,
But, apparently, death skillfully wags its tail.
Here every evening in a terrible place
The gray fog wears away the earth like tears.
The war unexpectedly returned to the house,
But he doesn’t want to go back.

One can assess differently the tragic circumstances that arose for our country and army at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War. Patriotic War. It is possible to rethink and interpret the reasons why so many of our soldiers died in the terrible chaos of the first months of the Nazi invasion in the Vyazemsky cauldron. But one thing is obvious: they died as heroes, showing sacrificial love for the Motherland.

Our information

After the end of the Battle of Smolensk and the battles for Kyiv, the Soviet command believed that if the Germans launched another major attack on Moscow, the main blow would be delivered along the Minsk-Moscow highway. Therefore, this direction, it seemed, was reliably covered by the forces of the Western and Reserve Fronts. And indeed, the German command in the early autumn of 1941 decided to carry out the last major operation for the capture of Moscow, called "Typhoon".

Never during the entire Second world war The German command did not concentrate such a powerful group of troops and equipment on one sector of the front.

On October 7, tank formations of the 3rd and 4th tank groups managed to connect and close pincers at Vyazma. The troops of the 16th, 19th, 20th, 24th, 32nd armies, the group of General I.V. Boldin, as well as part of the forces and rear services of the 30th, 33rd and 43rd armies were surrounded. During October 7-12 Soviet troops made repeated attempts to break the encirclement. Unfortunately, these attacks were not delivered simultaneously, but in several places northwest and southwest of Vyazma, which did not allow most units and formations to overcome the steel curtain and escape from encirclement.

All day on October 10, the troops of the 20th Army tried to break through the front of the encirclement; its units fought in the area of ​​​​the villages of Volodarets, Panfilovo, Nesterovo, Vypolzovo, but unsuccessfully. Then the commander Lieutenant General F. A. Ershakov changes the direction of the main attack and decides to make a breakthrough in the direction of Krasny Kholm - Rozhnovo. The last attempt to get out of the encirclement turned out to be fatal for the soldiers of the 20th Army - the units were unable to break through, and about 5 divisions were killed in the battle. After this battle, the 20th Army ceased to exist as a combat-ready unit. General Ershakov was captured.

Units of the 24th Army were also unable to break through the encirclement, Army Commander K. I. Rakutin died.

The troops under the command of Lieutenant General M.F. Lukin, operating in the area north of Vyazma (19th and 32nd armies and the group of General Boldin), were preparing for a breakthrough in the direction of Bogoroditskoye. The breakthrough began on October 11 at 16.00. But, despite the fact that it was carried out, it was not possible to secure and strengthen the flanks. The Nazis very quickly closed the encirclement again. Only separate units of the 2nd and 91st rifle divisions managed to escape from the cauldron.

General Lukin, along with the group's headquarters, was captured.