Order No. 270 - the key to disrupting the blitzkrieg or “another crime of the Stalinist regime”?
Exactly 80 years ago, on August 16, 1941, Order No. 270 of the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command “On the responsibility of military personnel for surrendering and leaving weapons to the enemy” was issued.
The order was signed by the Chairman of the State Defense Committee Stalin, Deputy Chairman of the State Defense Committee Molotov, Marshals of the Soviet Union Budyonny, Voroshilov, Timoshenko, Shaposhnikov and Army General Zhukov.
Over the past 30 years, bubbles of outright lies and speculation have continued to bubble up around Order No. 270. Today's date was no exception.
Here are a few excerpts from newly published “expert” opinions dedicated to the memorable date:
“All Red Army soldiers who surrendered to the enemy were declared deserters and traitors to the Motherland. Every Red Army soldier was obliged to fight to the last drop of blood, even if his military unit was surrounded.”
Or even more forcefully:
“Covering up their own mistakes and miscalculations, the horrific pre-war repressions and incompetent personnel policies that bled the army before the start of the war, Stalin and his entourage sought to at least partially shift the blame for the catastrophe to the military leaders who fell under the brunt of the attack of the advancing enemy, as well as to shackle the demoralized by such fear troops so that he would drown out even the fear of death.”
The most disgusting thing is that this same interpretation of Order No. 270 is drummed into the heads of schoolchildren and students during thematic history lessons, and then members of the government are surprised at the decomposition of society.
sample brainwashing for schoolchildren
As you can see, the first quote states that ALL Red Army soldiers who surrendered to the enemy were declared deserters and traitors. In the second case, it is felt that the author of the article still found the time and read the text of the Order, but for a number of reasons could not resist making garbage interpretations.
example of Hitler's propaganda
In order not to beat around the bush for too long, let us turn to the text of Order No. 270.
I order:
1. Commanders and political workers who, during a battle, tear off insignia and deserting to the rear or surrender to the enemy, be considered malicious deserters, whose families are to be arrested as oaths and those who have betrayed their homeland deserters.
To oblige all senior commanders and commissioners to shoot on the spot such deserters from the commanders.
2. The units and subunits that were encircled by the enemy selflessly fight to the last opportunity, to protect the material part, as the eyeball of the eye, to break through to their backs of the enemy troops, defeating the fascist dogs.
To oblige each soldier, irrespective of his official position, to demand from a higher commander, if part of him is surrounded, to fight to the last possible opportunity to break through to his own, and if such a commander or part of the Red Army men prefer to surrender to the enemy instead of organizing a rebuff, - destroy they by all means, both ground and air, and the families of the surrendered Red Army soldiers to deprive of state benefits and assistance.
3. To oblige the commanders and commissars of divisions to immediately remove from posts the commanders of battalions and regiments hiding in the gaps during battle and who are afraid to direct the course of battle on the battlefield, reduce them ex officio as impostors, transfer them to private soldiers and, if necessary, shoot them on the spot, putting forward their place is courageous and courageous people from the junior commanders or from the ranks of distinguished Red Army men.
The order to read in all companies, squadrons, batteries, squadrons, teams and headquarters.
You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to understand the main thing: Order No. 270 was directly addressed to the commanders and political workers of the Red Army, clearly defining in what cases they would be recognized as deserters.
The Order steadily demanded of all Soviet military personnel to fight to the last bullet, even when surrounded, and it does not say a word that a soldier is obliged to die if he does not have the opportunity to continue the fight.
The introductory part of the Order gave examples of the steadfastness and courage of Soviet commanders, whose formations managed not only to escape from encirclement, but also to inflict serious damage on the enemy.
introductory part of the Order, which talks about the exploits of the faithful commanders of the Red Army
That is, only those military personnel who tore off their insignia and surrendered without a fight, abandoning their subordinates and equipment to the mercy of fate, were declared deserters and enemies, which clearly separated heroes from cowards and alarmists.
The Germans used the text of Order No. 270 in their own way, dropping on the heads of the encirclement and distributing carefully edited leaflets and special editions of newspapers in prisoner of war camps, which stated that for Stalin and the Soviet command all captured soldiers and commanders were traitors.
You can often find information that during the execution of Order No. 270 there were unjustified repressions. So, for 15 years, Lieutenant General V.Ya. Kachalov, Major General P.G. Ponedelin and Major General N.K. The Kirillovs were officially considered traitors who had deliberately surrendered.
General Kachalov, who died in a tank during a breakout from encirclement, became a victim of Mehlis’s false report to Stalin. On the basis of the Order, Kachalov was declared a traitor and sentenced in absentia to capital punishment. The general's wife and mother-in-law were repressed.
And only after the war, in 1950, his good name was cleared. The fact of Kachalov’s death in a tank was discovered, recorded by the commander of the 9th Wehrmacht Army Corps, General Geyer. The village residents of Starinka, in the Smolensk region, according to German officers, indicated where the mass grave was located in which Kachalov was buried along with his soldiers.
Lieutenant General Kachalov, who died a heroic death
Based on the exhumation and the conclusions of the forensic medical examination, in December 1953, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR overturned the verdict and completely rehabilitated General Kachalov.
As for generals Ponedelin and Kirillov, they are often mentioned as “victims of the paranoia of the father of nations” and even “Stalin’s hatred of the increased popularity of the generals after the war.”
Generals Ponedelin (in front) and Kirillov, who surrendered near Uman in the summer of 1941
Ponedelin and Kirillov were captured together near Uman. Hitler's propaganda took advantage of this circumstance, distributing photographs of the interrogation of captured generals by German officers in prisoner-of-war camps and in units of the Active Army.
Generals Ponedelin and Kirillov survived captivity, were released and returned to their homeland, but upon their return they were arrested and the investigation into their captivity was conducted for five whole years, and an additional investigation was organized against Ponedelin.
On August 25, 1950, Ponedelin and Kirillov were stripped of their awards, military ranks and executed by verdict of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR.
Both generals were rehabilitated in 1956 with the wording “for lack of evidence of a crime.”
When asked about the reasons why Ponedelin and Kirillov were shot after the war, they give the captured archives of the Nazis and the fate of Lieutenant General Muzychenko, commander of the 6th Army, who was also captured by the Germans near Uman.
The answer is also contained in part of the guilty verdict handed down by the Military Collegium to Ponedelin, which states the following: “being the commander of the 12th Army and being surrounded by enemy troops, he did not show the necessary persistence and will to win, succumbed to panic and on August 7, 1941, violating military oath, betrayed his homeland, surrendered to the Germans without resistance, and during interrogations he provided them with information about the composition of the 12th and 6th armies.”
German archives indicate that Ponedelin was very talkative during interrogations and shared all the information he had with the enemy. Kirillov did not lag behind him.
photograph that played a fatal role in the fate of generals Ponedelin and Kirillov
While in captivity, Ponedelin, although he rejected Vlasov’s offer to join the ROA, was under a non-strict regime and even kept a diary with entries that later became part of his conviction.
General Muzychenko, who was captured with a serious wound in the leg, was placed by the Germans in the Hammelburg concentration camp, where high and senior officers of the Red Army were prisoners of war (generals Karbyshev, Ershakov, Romanov, Potapov, Nikitin, the last defender of the Brest Fortress, Major Gavrilov and others). In Hammelburg, the Germans initially created conditions for the captured Soviet generals, allocating for them a whole barracks and orderlies from captured soldiers, but at one point they were visited by a representative of the Abwehr, who invited the respected general to write “purely theoretical” conclusions about his combat experience and the reasons for his captivity or to “consult » on issues of fortification.
Intractable generals and senior officers were either shot on the spot or transferred to penal camps such as Flossenburg and Mauthausen, where they were subjected to severe abuse and could easily be beaten to death by guards.
General Muzychenko was taciturn during interrogations, flatly rejected any offer of cooperation and, as a result, was transferred to a strict prison at the Weissenburg fortress, and then to the Mossburg camp, from where the general was released by the Americans.
Lieutenant General Muzychenko
Returning to the USSR, Muzychenko passed the NKVD check and in December 1945 was reinstated in the Soviet Army and served in leadership positions until 1947. He retired due to health reasons. Ivan Nikolaevich died in 1970, in honor and respect.
Truly, to each his own.
In conclusion, we note one important circumstance noted in the work “The Classification of Secrecy Has Been Removed” by a team of historians under the leadership of Colonel General Krivosheev, accepted for study in many respectable universities and academies around the world.
According to G.F. Krivosheev, during the Great Patriotic War, a total of 3 military personnel went missing and were captured (another 396 were attributed to unaccounted combat losses of the first year of the war, when combat units did not provide any reports on these losses ), that is, the total number of missing, captured and unaccounted for combat losses is 400 people, of which only 1 thousand people are officially listed as prisoners of war.
This means that the highest military-political leadership of the USSR knew about this, but chose to turn a blind eye. And Stalin, the “great and terrible”, knowing this, issued an order according to which in the notices to families from the front they wrote “loyal to the oath, military duty and the socialist Motherland, missing in action.” This document was also a certificate according to which the family of the “missing person” was supposed to be paid benefits.
This fact contradicts the falsehood popular in certain circles, which claims that in the summer of 1941 Stalin, in the presence of representatives of the International Red Cross, declared: “there are no prisoners of war in the Red Army, there are only traitors and traitors to the Motherland.” There is no evidence of this, “but this is Stalin...”
It is important to understand that in a war, especially one that raged 80 years ago, there is no place for abstract humanism, which the fifth column so loves to gossip about.
Perhaps this will sound like news to some, but not a single army in the world has or has had an article in its regulations or orders about “correct” surrender, otherwise the armed forces can be disbanded with a clear conscience.
Order No. 270 was adequate to the situation in the summer of 1941, without giving rise to discrepancies. He strengthened the morale of the strong—and motivated the wavering to fight hard. The Army needed this Order like air to suppress defeatist sentiments among the demoralized part of the command staff.
Thus, Order No. 270 fulfilled its task and its significance for history cannot be overestimated.
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