When they took the Brest fortress. Heroic defense of the Brest fortress

"Enlightened" Europeans and others will never understand normal Russian people who gave their lives for their Motherland during the war! Not for a bun with sausage and schnapps, but for the Motherland. They still do not realize that the Motherland is more important than sausage...

70 years ago, at 4 o'clock in the morning, an event took place that turned the life of every citizen of our country upside down. It seems that a lot of time has passed since that moment, but there are still a lot of secrets and reticences. Over some of them we tried to lift the veil.

Underground heroes

“The losses are very heavy. For all the time of the fighting - from June 22 to June 29 - we lost 1121 people killed and wounded. The fortress and the city of Brest are captured, the bastion is under our complete control, despite the cruel courage of the Russians. The soldiers are still being fired upon from the basements - lone fanatics, but we will soon deal with them.

This is an excerpt from a report to the General Staff by Lieutenant General Fritz Schlieper, commander of the 45th Wehrmacht Infantry Division - the same one that stormed the Brest Fortress. The official date of the fall of the citadel is June 30, 1941. The day before, the Germans launched a large-scale assault, capturing the last fortifications, including the Kholm Gate. The surviving Soviet soldiers, having lost their commanders, went into the cellars and flatly refused to surrender. To the 70th anniversary of the beginning of the Great Patriotic War"AiF" conducted a special investigation and tried to find out who the last heroes of the Brest Fortress were, and how many days their underground war lasted ...

lone ghosts

- After capturing the citadel guerrilla war I spent at least a month in the casemates,” explains Alexander Bobrovich, a historian and researcher from Mogilev. – In 1952, an inscription was found on the wall of the barracks near the Bialystok Gate: “I am dying, but I do not give up. Farewell, Motherland. July 20, 1941. They fought according to the “shoot-and-run” tactics: they made a couple of accurate shots at the Germans and went back to the cellars. On August 1, 1941, non-commissioned officer Max Klegel wrote in his diary: “Two of ours died in the fortress - a half-dead Russian stabbed them with a knife. It's still dangerous here. I hear gunfire every night."

... The archives of the Wehrmacht dispassionately record the heroism of the defenders of the Brest Fortress. The front went far ahead, the fighting was already going on near Smolensk, but the destroyed citadel continued to fight. On July 12, "a Russian rushed from the tower to a group of sappers, holding two grenades in his hands - four were killed on the spot, two died in the hospital from wounds." July 21 "Corporal Erich Zimmer, went out for cigarettes, was strangled with a belt." How many fighters were hiding in the casemates is unclear.

There is no consensus on who the last defender of the Brest Fortress could be. Historians of Ingushetia refer to the testimony of Stankus Antanas, a captured SS officer: “In the second half of July, I saw an officer of the Red Army get out of the casemates. Seeing the Germans, he shot himself - in his pistol was the last cartridge. During the search of the body, we found documents in the name of senior lieutenant Umat-Girey Barkhanoev.”

The latest case is the capture of Major Pyotr Gavrilov, head of the defense of the Eastern Fort. He was taken prisoner on July 23, 1941 at the Kobrin fortification: a wounded man killed two German soldiers in a shootout. Later, Gavrilov said that he hid in the basements for three weeks, making sorties at night with one of the fighters until he died. How many more such lone ghosts remained in the Brest Fortress?

... In 1974, Boris Vasiliev, the author of the book “The Dawns Here Are Quiet ...”, published the novel “He Was Not on the Lists”, which received no less fame. The hero of the book, Lieutenant Nikolai Pluzhnikov, fights alone in the Brest Fortress ... until April 1942! Mortally wounded, he learns the news that the Germans are defeated near Moscow, leaves the basement and dies. How reliable is this information?

– I should note that the novel by Boris Vasiliev is purely piece of art, - Valery Hubarenko, director of the memorial complex "Brest Hero-Fortress", Major General, spreads his hands. - And the facts of the death of the last defender of Brest given there, unfortunately, do not have any documentary evidence.

Little Known Facts

1. The Brest Fortress was stormed not by the Germans, but by the Austrians. In 1938, after the Anschluss (annexation) of Austria to the Third Reich, the 4th Austrian division was renamed the 45th Wehrmacht infantry division - the same one that crossed the border on June 22, 1941.

2. Major Gavrilov was not repressed, as indicated in the credits of the movie hit "Brest Fortress", but in 1945 he was expelled from the party ... for losing his party card in captivity!

3. In addition to the fortress, the Nazis could not take the Brest railway station for 9 days. Railway workers, police and border guards (about 100 people) went into the basements and at night made attacks on the platform, shooting Wehrmacht soldiers. The soldiers ate cookies and sweets from the buffet. As a result, the Germans flooded the basements of the station with water.

Flamethrowers against courage

Meanwhile, on August 15, 1941, a photo of soldiers with flamethrowers "performing a combat mission in the Brest Fortress" appeared in the Nazi press - living proof that skirmishes in casemates went on for almost two months after the start of the war. Having lost patience, the Germans used flamethrowers to smoke out the last brave men from the shelters. Half blind in the dark, without food, without water, bleeding, the fighters refused to surrender, continuing to resist. The inhabitants of the villages around the fortress claimed that the shooting from the citadel was heard until mid-August.

- Presumably, the end of the resistance of the Soviet border guards in the fortress can be considered August 20, 1941, - Tadeusz Krulevsky, a Polish historian, believes. - A little earlier, the German commandant of Brest, Walter von Unruh, was visited by Colonel of the General Staff Blumentritt and ordered to "immediately put the fortress in order." For three days in a row, day and night, using all types of weapons, the Germans carried out a total cleansing of the Brest Fortress - probably, these days its last defenders fell. And already on August 26, two people visited the dead fortress - Hitler and Mussolini ...

... Lieutenant General Fritz Schlieper himself in the same report indicated: he cannot understand the meaning of such fierce resistance - "probably the Russians fought purely out of fear of execution." Schliper lived until 1977 and, I think, did not understand: when a person rushes with a grenade at enemy soldiers, he does not do this because of someone's threats. And just because he is fighting for his homeland ...

Alexey Seredin, Georgy Zotov

The garrison of the Brest Fortress was one of the first to take the blow of the German army during the start.

The courage and heroism of its defenders are forever inscribed in the analogues of world history, which cannot be forgotten or distorted.

Treacherous attack

An unexpected assault on the fortress began at 4:00 in the early morning of June 22, 1941 with a hurricane of artillery fire.

Aimed and crushing fire destroyed ammunition depots and damaged communication lines. The garrison immediately suffered significant losses in manpower.

As a result of this attack, the water supply system was destroyed, which further complicated the position of the defenders of the fortress. Water was required not only for the fighters, who were ordinary living people, but also for machine guns.

Defense of the Brest Fortress 1941 photo

After a half-hour artillery attack, the Germans threw three battalions into the attack, which were part of the 45th Infantry Division. The number of attackers was one and a half thousand people.

The German command considered this number to be quite sufficient to cope with the garrison of the fortress. And, at first, the Nazis did not meet serious resistance. The effect of surprise did its job. The garrison ceased to be a single entity, but turned out to be divided into several pockets of resistance that were not coordinated among themselves.

The Germans, breaking into the fortress through the Terespol fortification, quickly passed through the Citadel and reached the Kobrin fortification.

Unexpected rebuff

The more unexpected for them was the counterattack Soviet soldiers behind their lines. The soldiers of the garrison, who survived the shelling, grouped under the command of the remaining commanders, and the Germans received a tangible rebuff.

The inscription of the defenders of the Brest Fortress on the wall photo

In some places, the attackers were met with harsh bayonet attacks, which turned out to be a complete surprise for them. The attack began to choke. And not just choke, but the Nazis had to hold the defense themselves.

Quickly recovering from the shock from the unexpected and treacherous attack of the enemy, the garrison units that found themselves in the rear of the attackers were able to dismember and even partially destroy the enemy. The enemy met the strongest resistance on the Volyn and Kobrin fortifications.

A small part of the garrison was able to break through and leave the fortress. But most of it remained inside the ring, which the Germans closed by 9 o'clock in the morning. Between 6 and 8 thousand people remained inside the encirclement ring. In the Citadel, the Germans were able to hold only some areas, including the club building, which dominated the rest of the fortifications, converted from a former church. In addition, the Germans had at their disposal the dining room of the command staff and part of the barracks at the Brest Gates, which survived after shelling.

The German command allotted only a few hours to take the fortress, but by noon it became clear that this plan had failed. During the day, the Germans had to bring in additional forces left in reserve. Instead of the original three battalions, the group storming the fortress increased to two regiments. The Germans could not use artillery to the full extent, so as not to destroy their own soldiers.

Defense of the Brest Fortress

By the night of June 23, the German command withdrew its troops and shelling began. In between, there was an offer to surrender. About 2 thousand responded to it, but the main part of the defenders preferred resistance. On June 23, the united groups of Soviet soldiers under the command of Lieutenant Vinogradov, Captain Zubachev, Regimental Commissar Fomin, Senior Lieutenant Shcherbakov and Private Shugurov, drove the Germans out of the ring barracks they occupied at the Brest Gates and planned to organize a long-term defense of the fortress, hoping to receive reinforcements.

Brest Fortress, July 1941 photo

It was planned to create a Defense Headquarters, and even a draft Order No. 1 was written on the creation of a consolidated battle group. However, on June 24, the Germans were able to break into the Citadel. A large group of the garrison tried to break through the Kobrin fortification and, although they were able to break through outside fortresses, most of them were destroyed or captured. On June 26, the last 450 fighters of the Citadel were captured.

The feat of the defenders of the "Eastern Fort"

The defenders of the Eastern Fort held out the longest. There were about 400 of them. Major P.M. Gavrilov commanded this grouping. The Germans went on the attack in this area up to 10 times a day, and each time they rolled back, meeting fierce resistance. And only on June 29, after the Germans dropped an air bomb weighing 1800 kg on the fort, the fort fell.

Defense of the Brest Fortress photo

But even before August, the Germans could not carry out a total cleansing and feel like full masters. Every now and then, local pockets of resistance arose, when shooting from still living soldiers was heard from under the ruins. They preferred death to captivity. Major Gavrilov, who was seriously wounded, was among the latest captured, and this happened already on July 23.

Before visiting the fortress, and at the end of August, all the cellars of the fortress were flooded with water. Brest Fortress - a symbol of courage and steadfastness of Soviet soldiers In 1965, Brest was awarded the title of Hero Fortress.

Despite the threat of attack Nazi Germany, the supreme leadership of the USSR preferred to ignore any signals confirming the likelihood of war. Stalin relied on the non-aggression pact signed by Hitler and was sure that the leader of Germany, who fought with England, would not risk waging a war on two fronts. However, his assumptions turned out to be fatal miscalculations for the country. And one of the first to take the blow of the supposedly unexpected attack was the Brest Fortress (Belarus).

Bloody June morning

Whatever the general line of the Kremlin during Hitler's victorious campaign across Europe, on the western borders Soviet Union, of course, there were military border fortifications. And they, of course, saw increased activity on the other side of the border. However, no one received the order to put them on military alert. Therefore, when on June 22 at 4.15 am the artillery troops of the Wehrmacht opened heavy fire, it was literally like a bolt from the blue. The attack caused serious and irreparable damage to the garrison, destroying the warehouses of weapons, food, communications, water supply, and so on. The Brest Fortress hosted the first battle during the war, which resulted in monstrous losses and complete demoralization.

military readiness

As follows from open sources, on the eve of the attack, there were eight rifle battalions and one reconnaissance battalion, artillery divisions, as well as some units of rifle divisions, border detachments, engineering regiments, and NKVD troops on the territory of the fortress on the eve of the attack. The total number of personnel reached nine thousand soldiers and officers, plus about three hundred of their families. General Leonid Sandalov recalled that the location of the military on the western border of Belarus was determined technical capabilities their placement. This explained the high concentration of parts with their stocks on the very border.

In turn, from the side of the invaders to the garrison, a total of twenty thousand fighters, that is, more than twice the number of the Soviet defensive line in Brest. However, a historical clarification needs to be made. Brest Fortress was not taken German troops. The attack was carried out by the Austrians, who joined the ranks of the Nazi army after joining in 1938. How long the Brest Fortress held with such a numerical superiority is not the most important question. The hardest thing to understand is how they managed to do what they did.

Taking the fortress

The assault began eight minutes after the first hurricane hit. The offensive attack was initially carried out by up to one and a half thousand infantrymen. Events developed rapidly, the garrison of the fortress could not provide a single purposeful resistance due to the unexpectedness of the blow. As a result, the parts that defended the fortress were divided into several islands isolated from each other. Having learned such a balance of power, anyone would wonder how long the Brest Fortress held out. Initially, it seemed that, indeed, the Germans were advancing deep into the defense easily and confidently, without encountering a serious rebuff. However, the Soviet units, which were already behind enemy lines, concentrated, were able to break the whole offensive and destroy part of the enemy.

A group of fighters was able to leave the fortress and the city, retreating deep into Belarus. But the majority failed to do this, and it was they who continued to defend their firing line to the last. According to researchers, six thousand were able to leave the fortress, and nine thousand fighters remained. Five hours later, the ring around the fortress closed. By that time, resistance had intensified, and the Nazis had to use reserves, bringing the offensive forces to two regiments. One of the participants in the offensive later recalled that they did not meet much resistance, but the Russians did not give up. How long the Brest Fortress held on and how it succeeded surprised the Nazis.

Holding lines to the last

By the end of the first day of the attack, the Nazis began shelling the fortress. During breaks, they offered Soviet soldiers to surrender. Almost two thousand people heeded their admonitions. The most powerful units of the Soviet units managed to meet at the House of Officers and plan a breakthrough operation. But it never had to be carried out: the Nazis were ahead of them, the Red Army soldiers were killed, someone was captured. How long did the Brest Fortress last? The last commander of the troops was captured on July 23 after the offensive. Although already on June 30, the Nazis managed to almost completely suppress organized resistance. However, separate pockets remained, single fighters who united and scattered again, someone managed to escape to the partisans in Belovezhskaya Pushcha.

No matter how the Wehrmacht planned, the first frontier - the Brest Fortress - was not so simple. How long the defense lasted is an ambiguous question. According to various sources, even before August 1941 there was a single resistance. Ultimately, in order to eliminate the last Soviet soldiers, the cellars of the Brest Fortress were flooded with water.

In June 1941 - one of the most heroic pages in the military history of our Motherland. It was here that the Red Army demonstrated for the first time to the whole world that it was invincible.

Storm

By the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, several rifle battalions, anti-tank and air defense divisions were stationed in the Brest Fortress, a total of about 7,000 military personnel.

The assault on the Brest Fortress began early in the morning on June 22, it was carried out by units of the 45th German Infantry Division numbering at least 18 thousand soldiers under the command of Nazi General Fritz Schlieper.

After a powerful preliminary artillery preparation, during which more than 7 thousand artillery ammunition was used up, the attack began. The order of the command of the Red Army on the withdrawal of parts of the rifle division from the fortress did not have time to be fulfilled.

The defenders of the Brest Fortress, in fact, were taken by surprise, deafening them with a hurricane of artillery fire. In the first minutes of the unexpected attack, the fortress and its garrison suffered significant damage, and part of the commanding staff was destroyed.

The garrison was divided into several parts, beheaded, so they could not provide a single coordinated resistance. Already on the afternoon of June 22, the first German assault detachments were able to capture the Northern Gates of the Brest Fortress.

However, soon the defenders of the Brest Fortress were able to offer serious resistance to the enemy, going over to the counteroffensive. Part of the Nazi division was successfully dismembered and destroyed, incl. in bayonet attacks.

However, separate sections of the fortress remained under the control of the Germans, and fierce battles continued throughout the night. By the morning of June 23, part of our rifle battalions managed to leave the fortress, the rest continued to fight with the Nazis.

The Germans did not expect such tough resistance, so far they have not had to face such a rebuff in occupied Europe, which quickly surrendered under pressure. German weapons so they retreated.

Going on the defensive

Deprived of command, the soldiers of the Red Army began to independently unite in small battle groups, choose their commanders and continue the defense of the Brest Fortress.

The House of Officers became the defense headquarters, from where Captain Zubachev, Commissar Fomin and their comrades-in-arms tried to coordinate the actions of the disparate combat detachments of the Red Army. However, on June 24, the Germans occupied almost the entire citadel.

The fighting continued until 29 June. As a result, most of the defenders of the fortress died or were captured. To stop the resistance, the Nazis dropped more than 20 air bombs weighing 500 kg each on the Brest Fortress, and fires started.

Nevertheless, the surviving fighters did not give up, they continued active resistance, the defense of the Brest Fortress continued, despite the significantly superior forces of the attacking enemy.

According to historians, some of our soldiers resisted the German army in the casemates of the fortress until August 1941. As a result, the German command ordered the cellars of the casemates to be flooded.

I read it today with a colleague poltora_bobra post . I thought, but, really, how long did the Brest Fortress fight? How to count? From June 22 to June 29, 1941 (organized resistance, the fall of the Eastern Fort ended), or until the moment when her last defender was killed or captured? Judging by the information from the Internet, the commander of the 44th Infantry Regiment, Major Gavrilov, after all, could be not last defender fortresses. How reliable are the stories that such could have been up to the beginning of February 1942, I do not know. But logic and common sense tell me that this is hardly true. And, here, the fact that on July 23, 1941, being seriously wounded, Major Gavrilov was captured is well known. He fought as much as he could, as long as his human strength was enough, fought like a hero. His defense of the Brest Fortress is not 7 days, it is a month. Such an account!

By June 22, 1941, the Germans already had experience of fighting for this fortress. In September 1939, the Poles defended her from September 14 to 17, after which they left. They fought then well, competently, they could fight further, but they preferred to leave. Later, on September 22, 1939, Germany handed over Brest and the fortress to the USSR.

The Germans took into account the experience of the battles of September 1939, but, nevertheless, they miscalculated in the "small" - the Poles are not Russians!

"The German command planned to capture the Brest Fortress on the very first day - by 12 o'clock, because the direct assault on the fortress was entrusted to the assault detachments of the 45th division, formed in the mountains of Upper Austria - in Hitler's homeland and therefore distinguished by special devotion to the Fuhrer. To storm the fortress, the division was reinforced three artillery regiments, nine mortars, heavy mortar batteries and super-powerful Karl and Thor siege guns.

But it was different here than in Europe. Soldiers and officers ran out of houses and barracks, looked around for a moment, but instead of raising their hands, they pressed themselves against the walls of the buildings and, using any cover, began to shoot. Some, riddled with German bullets, remained where they had fought their first and last battle; others, continuing to shoot back, left ...

In the first hours, the enemy captured the territory of the fortress, many buildings and fortifications, but the remaining in the hands of the Soviet soldiers were so well located that they made it possible to keep significant areas under fire. The defenders were sure that they would not have to defend themselves for a long time - the regular units were about to come up and sweep away the Nazis. But hours and days passed, the position of the defenders worsened: there was almost no food, there was not enough water ... Mukhavets is nearby, but can you really get to him! Many fighters crawled for water - and did not return ...

The fascists did not take seriously the resistance of disparate, even unconnected groups, and expected that very soon the besieged would raise a white flag. But the fortress continued to fight, and soon the Nazis realized that the Russians were not going to surrender. And then, with a piercing squeal, shells of heavy artillery rushed from behind the Bug, and then the Nazis went on the attack again, and again they had to retreat, leaving the dead and carrying away the wounded ... "

“It was July 23, 1941, that is, on the thirty-second day of the war ... On this day, the Nazis brought a major who had just been captured in the fortress to the camp hospital. The captured major was in full command uniform, but all his clothes turned into tatters, his face was covered with gunpowder and dust and overgrown with a beard.He was wounded, unconscious and looked exhausted to the extreme.It was in the full sense of the word a covered with leather. To what extent exhaustion had reached, it could be judged by the fact that the prisoner could not even make a swallowing movement: he did not have enough strength for this, and the doctors had to apply artificial nutrition to save his life. But the German soldiers who took him prisoner and brought him to the camp told the doctors that this man, in whose body life was barely glimmering, just an hour ago, when they caught him in one of the casemates of the fortress, single-handedly took fought them, threw grenades, fired a pistol and killed and wounded several Nazis. They spoke of this with involuntary reverence, frankly amazed at the fortitude of the Soviet commander, and it was clear that only out of respect for his courage the prisoner was left alive. ... within a few days, German officers came from Brest who wanted to look at the hero who showed such amazing stamina, such will in the fight against the enemy "

C. Smirnov "Brest Fortress"

Former commander of the 44th Infantry Regiment of the 42nd Infantry Division, retired Major Gavrilov. 1961 Photo from the archive of Alexander Vasilyevich Kurpakov

Hero's grave

Major Gavrilov performed by Alexander Korshunov. Film "Brest Fortress"