Andrey Borisovich Zemlyanoy

Boris Lvovich Orlov

Military fictionOfficer #3

The USSR during the time of Stalin was a time of strong-willed and creative people.

Our compatriot Kirill Novikov, who came to the USSR in the 1930s, changed the world irrevocably, and everything is completely different. And now he, one of the leaders of the Soviet state and a strategist of peaceful construction, needs to solve completely different problems. After all, British and American capital is not going to calmly look at the strengthening and development of the USSR.

Andrey Zemlyanoy, Boris Orlov

I would like to sincerely thank Evgeny Svirelshchikov, Karen Stepanovich Stepanyan and Anatoly Starukhin for their active assistance in working on the book.

A. Zemlyanoy

© Andrey Zemlyanoy, Boris Orlov, 2016

© AST Publishing House LLC, 2016

This year the winter season in New York was especially bright and festive. The rich decoration of Rockefeller Center was astounding, and even the sophisticated, world-famous onlookers of the Big Apple froze, stunned by the shimmer of electric lights, the shine of glass and nickel-plated facade decorations, and the illuminated flags that fluttered in the artificial wind. A huge statue of Atlas, similar to Mussolini, which replaced River's facade fresco depicting the hated Lenin, washed by the rays of searchlights, inspired calm confidence in the inviolability of the world order.

In the large hall of Radio City, the orchestra thundered, and hundreds of couples converged, circled and separated again, obeying the magical commands of the music. Negro waiters in snow-white jackets glided like monochrome ghosts, serving champagne and canapes with beluga caviar, the aromas of expensive perfumes mixed with the aromas of expensive cigars, creating an amazing, unique feeling of wealth, happiness and contentment. An elegant girl in a thousand-dollar dress clung to her partner in a seven-hundred-dollar suit and whispered: “Darling, this is what heaven looks like, isn’t it?”

But on the fifty-sixth floor of RCA, in the Rockefeller office, the atmosphere was far from heavenly. Prescott Bush and James Warburg circled Jerome Stonewall Bass and Joseph Kennedy like predatory hyenas around a herd of buffalo. The similarity was strengthened by the peculiar appearance of Bass, who really looked like a hefty bull.

“Tell me, Bass, don’t you think your red protégés have gone too far?” - Warburg hissed. - What the heck? Where did the alliance between the Japanese emperor and this wild mountaineer come from?

Prescott Bush nodded sharply, agreeing with the opinion of his companion, currently a friend. John Davisson Rockefeller Jr., who was sitting at the table - however, no longer the youngest, but the only one - cast a short glance from under his furrowed eyebrows at Bass and Kennedy, but remained silent, waiting for an answer. And he was not slow to respond:

- What the heck?! - Stonewall Bass growled. – I need to ask you this, Bush, and you, Warburg. Why the hell did you and your boys allow Germany to actively get involved in China, where the Japs and Russians have their own interests? Did you seriously think that these guys, armed to the teeth, would calmly watch as your Nazi buddies stole steaks from their plates?!

Now Rockefeller threw the same look towards the “hyenas”.

“Free trade...” began Victor Rothschild, who was sitting in a chair with a Perfecto Colorado made to a special personal order in his hand, but Kennedy interrupted him:

– Free trade is wonderful, Victor. But where was this free trade when you refused to approve Russian loans for high-precision machines? Where was free trade when, thanks to your German banks, Japan found itself starved of steel? “He waved his hand somewhat theatrically. “You, gentlemen, yourself pushed the Russians and Japanese into each other’s arms, and now you ask where we were looking?”

“Indeed, Victor,” said Aaron Seligmann, who was modestly sitting in the corner of the office. – Are the Germans preparing for war? Wonderful. Are the Russians preparing for war? Better! Are the Japanese ready to get into the global fray? Quite good. But we can’t be so short-sighted as to allow the Germans to play on our lawn. In the end, we all agreed here that the fight should be fair and the big guys with the big clubs will be put on an equal footing. What actually happened?

He took a small sip of weak tea from an eighteenth-century Saxon porcelain cup and continued:

– Your German partners have taken the path of restricting free trade, which we all stand for here. They intercepted all iron ore reserves from Sweden and left the Japanese high and dry, introduced new duties, or rather an embargo, on the supply of equipment to Russia, and even got involved with both deceived parties in a trade war in China. To commit such stupidity,” Seligmann spoke quietly, but it seemed that his voice sounded like the roar of a mountain collapse, “it’s not enough to just be a fool. To do this you need to have strong support behind you. And you, Rothschild, know this as well as I do.

There was a heavy pause. Seligmann entered into an alliance with Bass and Kennedy and sided with Soviet Russia, if, of course, one could say so. This triumvirate opposed the Bush-Warburg-Rothschild alliance, which chose the Third Reich as its side. Both unions, of course, did not stop their cooperation with the “opposite” side, it’s just that “their” side had a little more interests and invested a little more money.

“I’ll tell you what, gentlemen,” Rockefeller, who had never taken either side, leaned forward. “Now is not the time to look for someone to blame.” It is much more important now to decide what to do in the current situation. The union of Soviet Russia and Japan has the character of almost a union, and such a unity creates unacceptable conditions for us: they are self-sufficient!

Warburg wanted to say something, but John stopped him with a conciliatory gesture:

- Wait, Warburg. Allow me, as the owner,” here Rockefeller allowed himself to smile slightly, “to finish. I know that each of us, to one degree or another, has already experienced a decrease in business activity in contacts with Russia and the Japanese. The islands are buying less and less raw materials, and this is not surprising: why would they buy something from us if the Russians are giving it to them for free? The Russians no longer need our cars and our equipment, and this is also understandable: unlike us, honest traders, Japan supplies them not with individual machines, but with entire factories.

And often together with the staff! But that wouldn’t be so bad: what’s much worse is that neither Russia nor Japan sells us anything anymore. Us! They are no longer interested in dollars! They pay each other without any money at all - a system of mutual settlements that always allows you to leave in the black the one you need at the moment. And on the foreign market they trade either with a solid backing of precious

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metals, or by barter, exchanging their products for what little they still need. And you and I, gentlemen, are not in this scheme! Completely and absolutely!

Now the silence was not just heavy: it hung menacingly, like a multi-ton rock over the head of an unwary tourist.

– John, old man, aren’t you exaggerating? – Stonewall Bass finally spoke up. – Three months ago, this, as you put it, “self-sufficient union” purchased from us a good ten tons of platinum catalysts for the production of high-octane gasoline. And now Warburg has an order for six tankers, four of which he seems to have already delivered and received payment for.

“We supplied the Russians with pipeline equipment,” Kennedy added. – And collapsible oil tanks – japam.

“It also seems to me that you are somewhat exaggerating the danger,” Bush said cautiously. – A huge batch of trucks was purchased through one of our companies...

The threatening silence dissipated. Everyone started talking, trying to remember more details about the latest deals with Russia and Japan. And reassure yourself: the situation is not as dire as Rockefeller says.

“Gentlemen,” John Davisson stopped this Niagara of information with one movement of his hand. – Gentlemen, let me ask: how did your counterparties pay you?

- How do you mean “than”? – Bush asked in surprise. - Dollars, sir, dollars. Real Fed tickets.

– Not oil, not engineering products, not textiles and raw silk, not steel, but dollars? – said Rockefeller.

“Wait, wait, Davisson,” Rothschild crushed a half-smoked cigar in a hammered ashtray. “You want to say that we sold our goods for...” here he hesitated, choked and grabbed his heart.

The rest looked in bewilderment at Victor Rothschild silently gasping for air, when Jerome Stonewall Bass suddenly slapped himself on the forehead:

- Thunder and lightning, John! Are you really saying that we gave these commies our goods for simple cut paper?! – he roared, finally becoming like a wild bull. “Are you saying that we were cheated like blacks at a fair?!”

“To the point, Bass,” Rockefeller also switched to the language of the rednecks. - For fucking cut paper, painted with fucking green paint!

“But how?...” Warburg began again, but Kennedy immediately interrupted him:

– It's very simple, Prescott. They pay us with dollars, which we cannot use to buy anything from them. They get rid of paper they no longer need...

There was a long pause again. Anxious pause. Not a good pause.

- And now what i can do? – Aaron Seligmann asked carefully. – What exactly are you proposing, John?

Both powerful unions – pro-German and pro-communist – have just ceased to exist. In the face of a threat to their idol, their fetish - the dollar, and therefore a threat to their very existence, the behind-the-scenes world rulers rejected all differences and were ready to present a united front at the first order. And since Rockefeller has voiced this threat, let him give such an order.

“First of all, we need to immediately curtail any trade with this communist union, this two-headed monster,” John Davisson said harshly. – From now on, don’t give them anything, even if they ask us for a pack of chewing gum or a safety pin – pin up the diaper!

“But penalties…” Warburg started to stutter, but Rockefeller cut short:

- Pay in dollars, James. If you don’t have enough, the Fed will print more for you personally.

Bass and Kennedy nodded in unison. Rothschild snapped his fingers and a silent servant handed him a glass of sherry.

- Second. We need to put pressure on the “old mother” so that they intervene in the future conflict to the fullest, and not pretend to be girls from the boarding school! Since the monster has grown a second head, you need to hit both. Let British India and ANZAC show themselves! They will help the Chinese - they are in a particularly difficult time right now, and at the same time they will not allow the commies to capture such a huge sales market.

Rothschild and Waburg, whose positions in the British Empire were the strongest, nodded affirmatively, the rest indicated their agreement with significant silence.

- Third. Kennedy and you, Bass. Take over Congress: push through an aid program for the Germans. Something like renting out equipment, weapons, and the like. Nazis cannot stand alone against two-headed commies. Let Vanderbilt and his boys launch a campaign in support of pan-European and world values. Pour as much dirt on the Russians and Japanese as you can find, and then add a few more buckets.

“We’ll do it, John,” Bass shook his head affirmatively. “Our guys will find the right words.”

“And fourth,” Rockefeller paused, as if gathering his thoughts. “We need to prepare America to enter this fight.” Не знаю, как именно и каким образом, но каждый янки, каждый джонни-реб, каждый паршивый ниггер и каждый грязный индеец должны спать и видеть, как их пошлют в Европу или в Китай. Connect the radio and the boys from Hollywood, buy musicians, writers, artists and newspapermen. Johnny must take his gun again and sail overseas!

In the silence that followed, the sounds of jazz could be heard from an unimaginable distance. The Big Apple celebrated Christmas - the last peaceful Christmas. But only those who gathered in office 5600 knew this...

Lend-Lease Law

The main thing is persistence, the rest is a matter of time.

Richard Bach. Escape from safety

A joint session of the Senate and House of Representatives of the Congress of the United States of America may approve this Act, which may be cited as the Defense of the United States Act.

(a) Notwithstanding the provisions of any other law, the President may, as necessary, when he deems it in the interest of the national defense, authorize the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of the Navy, or the heads of any other department or agency of the Government to:

1) produce in arsenals, factories and shipyards under their jurisdiction, or otherwise procure any defense material intended for the government of any country whose defense the President considers vital to the named States;

2) sell, transfer ownership, exchange, lease, give

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loan or otherwise supply to such government any defense material...

(3) test, inspect, repair, equip, alter, or otherwise place in good working order any defense material intended for any such government, or provide any or all such maintenance under private contract;

4) transmit to any such government any defense information relating to any defense material supplied to such government pursuant to paragraph 2 of this subsection;

(5) authorize the export of any defense material transferred in any manner to any such government under this subsection.

(b) The terms and conditions upon which any such government receives any assistance under subsection (a) shall be determined by the President to be satisfactory...

a) There is hereby authorized to be appropriated, as necessary, from funds of the Department of the Treasury not appropriated for other purposes, such sums as may be necessary to carry out the provisions and carry out the purposes of this Act.

Rule one, on the first page of the “Guide to Conduct of War” should read: “Never go to war with Russia.”

General Montgomery

For the second month, Novikov was in the west of the USSR, awaiting the European invasion. The horde, which this time was assembled to attack Russia, impressed even him, who was familiar with that history that no longer happened. More than twelve million soldiers and officers were massing in front of the border, awaiting orders. And for almost six months, trucks were coming from overseas in a mighty stream to Europe: gunpowder, copper and nickel, rubber and canned meat, explosives and high-octane gasoline - in a word, everything without which it is unthinkable to wage a modern war.

High-altitude reconnaissance officers monitored everything that happened in the adjacent territory without crossing the border line, and air defense services promptly detected attempted violations. The high-altitude I-220 of Mikoyan and Gurevich and the I-181 of Polikarpov, equipped with new engines that allowed them to accelerate to speeds of over six hundred kilometers per hour, flew out to intercept, no longer hiding much. In addition, the new fighters had a reinforced airframe design, which made it possible to conduct air combat even at maximum speeds. There were no orders to prevent provocations in this story, and planes with crosses or tricolor circles on torn planes adorned the Russian landscape long before the start of the war.

The resettlement of people from neighboring territories has been in full swing for two years now, and trains with the civilian population went deep into the country not under shelling and bombing, but as planned, on schedule. Where the population did not want to resettle or did not plan, according to the same schedules, self-defense units were created, and by March, for example, for the Jewish Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, the sight of men armed with rifles and light machine guns, rushing to serve or going out into the field, had become quite common. “We are strengthening the defense of our native land!” - these posters, depicting a smiling tractor driver with a rifle at hand, or a girl draftsman holding a drawer with a holster, were dazzling with telegraph poles and the walls of houses in the border regions. Hidden mobilization was in full swing in the country.

Suddenly, pasta and cereals suddenly became in short supply in stores, and any canned food was almost sold out by the boxful. At first the police tried to fight this, but then they gave up: you still can’t explain anything to anyone! And what could be explained to the inhabitants of the country, who only twenty years ago experienced a terrible, cruel and merciless Civil War?

Stocks and strategic reserves of raw materials, food and medicines were urgently replenished. Despite protests and references to the heavy workload, Stalin appointed Beria responsible for the State Reserve in November 1941. Lavrenty Pavlovich got down to business with the usual thoroughness and scrupulousness, combed through the entire system of state warehouses and storage facilities, after which many irresponsible comrades changed their positions of authority to the positions of forest fellers, loppers and diggers. By May '41, natural rubber reserves in the country had increased fivefold, food of all types - fourfold, non-ferrous metals - three and a half, and oil, coal and steel - twofold.

The entire zone of the future invasion had already been mined, and in some places more than once, and nodal points of defense were organized on all major highways. Reserve operating bases, reserve airfields and radio control points were being prepared.

Somehow, calmly and in working order, the army began to receive helicopters, which were immediately designed for landing troops and fire support. Engineers Cheremukhin, Mil, Bratukhin and Kamov, working in the same design bureau, first tried to make something like an ultra-light helicopter, but Chkalov immediately interrupted the spraying of funds by drawing on a working drawing board, right on top of the preliminary design, what in another story was called V-12, and under the silhouette wrote down the characteristics that need to be achieved. At the same time, he had such a face that none of the aircraft designers even thought to argue.

The concentration of forces yielded results, and the first B-1 rotorcraft successfully passed all tests and was put into service. Of course, the car was quite expensive, but they were able to form three helicopter regiments.

In addition, the first mobile missile systems with wire control, and much more, entered service with sabotage units.

In the extra year that the country managed to snatch away to prepare for war, many critical “tails” were pulled up, a powerful long-range bomber aviation was formed and a sufficient number of armored personnel carriers and tanks of three modifications were put into service. The main tank is the IS-1, the heavy breakthrough tank is the IS-2, and the maneuverable tracked infantry fighting vehicle with an automatic cannon, which occupied the niche of the light tank.

Europe was also preparing for war, albeit in its own way. Spain, Belgium, Sweden, Italy and other countries formed divisions to be sent to the eastern front, almost doubling the army of the Reich united with France, which gave Hitler hope for a blitzkrieg.

Of course, all this armed and somehow trained herd of “enlightened Europeans” was not an army, but it was quite suitable as second-line troops, security of communications and repair units, freeing the main striking force - the Wehrmacht and French units - from burdensome non-combat tasks.

Predictably, the first signs of preparation for hostilities began with the deployment of sabotage and reconnaissance groups. The headquarters of the Special Purpose Corps had long been relocated closer to the border and was located in Kyiv on the territory of one of the evacuated factories. In the regional center itself, only food production remained necessary for normal

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functioning of the city, repair shops and a number of auxiliary military production facilities - two cartridge factories and a repair plant. Everything else - entire production facilities with designers, engineers, machines and workers - was, just in case, transported beyond the Urals.

Groups of “wolfhounds” moved freely along the strip cleared of the civilian population, catching saboteurs who often had, in addition to passports that were invalid in this zone, also documents from non-existent or absent units and units. Several SB aircraft equipped with radio direction finders timely detected radio traffic, and an alarm group immediately flew there in helicopters.

Kobulov, who dealt with all issues of counterintelligence work, was celebrating his birthday, since the total number of spies caught was already in the hundreds and was constantly growing. There were also ethnic Russians in this stream, recruited at different times by German intelligence services and transferred to the Brandenburg regiment. But there were also a huge number of defectors who honestly reported about the concentration of European Reich troops on the border. Ordinary workers, peasants and office workers had not yet forgotten how much trouble the First World War had brought them, and did not want to become lubricant for Russian bayonets.

By the first of May, the bulk of the preparations for the invasion were ready, and even the bunkers of the Stalin line were fully equipped with personnel and weapons.

The first meeting of the State Defense Committee, created on the model of the same one that appeared in the previous, former reality on the eighth day of the war, and here created by a joint resolution of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the Council of People's Commissars even before the war, on March 12, 1942 , took place the day after its formation.

Stalin presided, of course. In front of the members of the State Defense Committee lay folders with lists of questions, but the leader himself did not sit at the table, but, as usual, leisurely walked along the long black bog oak table. Everyone was silent.

“I suppose there is no need to explain to anyone why we are all gathered here?” – Stalin finally asked.

General consonant silence served as his answer.

-Then let's listen to Comrade Voroshilov. Comrade Voroshilov,” Kliment Efremovich stood up, “report to us how preparations are going to repel an enemy attack on the western and southwestern borders, and also what is being done to protect the USSR together with the Socialist Japanese Empire in the Far East?

Voroshilov took the blotter with documents he had brought with him and walked up to the map.

“We have prepared counterattacks with access to the territory of Norway and Sweden here,” the pointer slid across the map, “and here.” One mechanized, two mountain rifle and four rifle mobilization corps are concentrated. To ensure the offensive from the air, four mixed aviation divisions were transferred to the Murmansk area, plus the Northern Fleet aviation. And one more thing,” Kliment Efremovich suddenly smiled and looked at his new deputy, tuju Masaharu Homma. – The Japanese comrades insist on the transfer of two aircraft carriers, at least one battleship, one heavy and two light cruisers by the Northern Sea Route with appropriate escort of light forces to ensure an offensive in the Norwegian direction from the sea.

Homma, realizing that they were talking about him, stood up, straightened his jacket and quickly uttered a few phrases. The translator looked questioningly at Stalin, who nodded affirmatively.

“The warriors of the Divine Tenno,” the translator bowed three times, “are immensely grateful to the brothers from the North and to you, Comrade Starin-sensei,” here he bowed twice, “for the help and support they provided to the Nippon army in southern China.” We will consider ourselves cowards, unworthy of the memory of our noble parents and ancestors, if we do not help you in the war against Western demons. The Son of Heaven, - again three bows, - has already approved the schedule for the transfer of sires to Murmansk.

– Comrades, our comrades in Japan know about the weakness and small numbers of the Northern Fleet, therefore the People’s Commissariat of Defense considers it necessary to accept their proposal.

Stalin looked around everyone present.

“There is an opinion that this is a good proposal,” the leader said slowly, with arrangement. - Correct and good proposal. There is no point in offending our Japanese comrades. Comrade Voroshilov, is the Murmansk naval base ready to accept such forces?

- That's right, Comrade Stalin. Now they are finishing work to prepare for servicing these forces.

“So we must express our deep gratitude,” here Stalin chuckled slightly, “to comrade Son of Heaven.” And the Japanese government...

Molotov nodded and made a note on the notepad in front of him.

Voroshilov, meanwhile, continued. He described the preparatory activities in the Baltic and elaborated on the preparation of defensive lines on the borders with East Prussia and in the Jewish Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic.

– How is it supposed to ensure the loyalty of the population of the former Baltic states? - asked Bulganin, who was responsible for food production at the State Defense Committee, and therefore was extremely worried about the fate of the fish and canning factories in Latvia and Estonia. – I remember that separatist sentiments are very strong there...

Stalin looked at Beria, he nodded, then smiled with only his lips:

– There is no reason for concern, Comrade Bulganin. The NKVD authorities did not spend the last year relaxing on the beaches there. They had no time to rest. At the moment, one million eight hundred forty-three thousand two hundred seventy-nine people have already been deported from the Baltic region, of which two hundred three thousand one hundred and ninety-five people have been transferred to the prosecutor's office in connection with their anti-Soviet or criminal activities. In addition, during these events, six thousand seven hundred and fifty-one people were killed who offered active resistance to our employees. As a result, we can now say with confidence that the threat of separatist and anti-Soviet protests in this region has been eliminated.

Beria paused, giving the rest of those gathered time to comprehend and remember this information, and then

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continued clearly and firmly:

– Of course, we cannot count on the same attitude in the Baltic region as, for example, in the Jewish or East Turkestan Autonomous Regions, but we can still guarantee the loyalty of the local population.

– Do you have any questions for Comrade Beria? – Stalin asked in the soft voice of a well-fed tiger. - No? Then we’ll ask Comrade Voroshilov to continue.

The People's Commissar of Defense moved on to describe preparatory measures on the territory of the Byelorussian SSR, smoothly moving south - to the Ukrainian regions of the RSFSR.

– The Dnieper flotilla allocated from its composition four monitors, two missile ships, two gunboats, nine armored boats and six air defense ships. The Vistula Military Flotilla was formed from them, the main task of which is to contain the enemy’s advance on the Vistula-Bug-San line, as well as support a possible counter-offensive on Lviv with access to the operational Slovak direction.

– Isn’t the Red Army planning a direct attack on Germany? – asked the head of the GKO evacuation group Kosygin.

“A serious fortified zone has been created on the borders of Germany,” Voroshilov answered. “In this regard, we do not yet consider the possibility of a counter-offensive through Pomerania as excessively costly and leading to unreasonably large losses. As for the possibility of an attack on Lvov-Lemberg and further, through the Carpathians, the complexity of conducting offensive operations through mountain ranges, even low-altitude ones, will not allow ensuring a sufficient rate of advance of troops and their normal supply at the initial stage of the war. We are considering only two possible offensive options at the first stage of combat operations: on the Northern Front and on the Southern Front - in the directions of Ploiesti and Bucharest, with the possibility of further reaching deep flank coverage of the advancing enemy groups and forcing them to significantly stretch the front line.

Those present listened to the marshal in silence, only Stalin nodded slightly.

– What are the prospects for the Caucasian direction? – asked the head of the Transcaucasian Federation Ordzhonikidze. – What is known about the plans of the Turks and the British?

“At the moment,” Voroshilov looked at his notes, “sixteen Turkish divisions are concentrated in the Caucasus direction.” To which two British divisions and a tank brigade, as well as French colonial units, can be sent to help. To initially counter possible aggression, one mountain rifle corps, one mountain cavalry and five rifle divisions, as well as two mechanized brigades, are concentrated in the border areas of the TSFSR. The reserve consists of six rifle divisions, two motorized rifle divisions and up to five corps of the second wave. In addition, according to your data, Comrade Sergo, partial mobilization has been carried out in the border areas...

– Which “partial”? - Mikoyan interrupted him. – What is “partial”? Yes, in Armenia, everyone who can lift a rifle has signed up for the militia! Women come and indicate men's names! Boys, about thirteen or fourteen years old, as tall as a rifle! - “And I’m already eighteen!” Here they reported from Yerevan: the oldest militia member is 96 years old! So he came with his weapon!

– What is Touvarich Mikoyan dissatisfied with? – asked Bunkichi Imamoto, General Counsel for Japanese Affairs. – The inhabitants of Armenia, like samurai, show the true sire and beauty of spirit worthy of the Son of Heaven and Old Sensei.

“Indeed, Comrade Mikoyan,” Stalin chuckled. – Explain to us the reason for your dissatisfaction.

“This spontaneous enrollment in the militia jeopardizes the disruption of spring field work and, as a result, the harvest of the whole year,” Ordzhonikidze answered instead of Mikoyan. “Any attempts to stop this movement lead to outbreaks of panic and almost flight of the population.

“They remember “Mets Egherrn” too well, Comrade Stalin,” Mikoyan explained, “they are no longer afraid for themselves, but for their children, for their families.” And if they are not taken into the militia, they think that they decided to surrender Armenia to the Turks without a fight...

“However, we need to do something about the field work,” Bulganin said. – The State Planning Committee warns about significant problems with vitamins, and the Armenian SSR is one of the main suppliers of citrus fruits...

Everyone looked at Ordzhonikidze, but Voroshilov answered, quite unexpectedly:

– There is a rifle corps and two second-echelon rifle divisions in Armenia. The People's Commissariat of Defense believes that their personnel can be used for agricultural work, at least until the outbreak of hostilities.

“This is a very good proposal, Comrade Voroshilov,” Ordzhonikidze warmly echoed. – The participation of fighters in field work will reassure the civilian population.

“There is an opinion that this is the right decision,” Stalin said weightily. – Now the USSR is the main food producer in our alliance with Japan. Any losses in food production are unacceptable. It should be clear to comrades from the Red Army: there is no land for them beyond the Dnieper. Not at all. Because death in battle is still better than death from hunger.

Stalin studied books on the Great Patriotic War well and understood that at the beginning of 1943, in that other history of the USSR, having lost the fields of Ukraine and Kuban, he was literally on the verge of famine. Then only the supplies of the allies and the withdrawal of grain from the untouchable state fund made it possible to avoid a disaster. But this time there will be no help from overseas...

“And in connection with the above,” Stalin walked up to the table and leaned on it, as if hanging over the others, “the question arises: how are things going with the evacuation of agricultural production to the central and southern regions?” Comrade Kosygin, please explain.

Alexey Nikolaevich stood up, walked up to the map and, asking Voroshilov to move, took the pointer from him.

“At the moment, preparations have been fully completed for plowing virgin lands in the Orenburg region,” the pointer ran along the map, “Kurgan, Kustanaya.” Responsible for

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For these works, Comrade Brezhnev reports that the readiness for tractor and automotive equipment is one hundred percent, for repair depots - ninety-six point seven percent, for fuel and lubricants - ninety-eight percent. There are some problems with workers' housing - up to thirty percent are housed in temporary tent camps, but the Evacuation Directorate believes that this issue will be resolved within the next three months.

– How are things going in Central Asia? – asked Beria.

– The area sown with cotton, necessary for the production of gunpowder, will be increased this year by twenty-three percent. Accordingly, it is planned to increase the production of vegetable oil from cotton seeds. Two margarine factories from Japan have already arrived, we will ask Comrade Bunkiti to speed up the delivery of two more. The combined capacity of all the arriving factories with those that have already been built will be enough to satisfy the needs of the USSR and Japan for margarine one hundred percent. And even more…

After Kosygin, Bukharin reported, followed by Zhdanov, appointed chairman of the State Planning Committee, and People's Commissar of Railways Yezhov. The country was ready for war...

We National Socialists pick up where we left off six centuries ago. We stop the eternal Germanic spread to the south and west of Europe and turn our attention to the countries in the east. Finally, we are breaking with the colonial and trade policies of the pre-war era and moving towards the land policies of the future.

If we think about lands, then today in Europe again we must first of all have in mind only Russia and the outlying states subject to it.

Adolf Gitler. My struggle

The TB-702 patrolling the border, equipped with a powerful radar, was the first to detect the takeoff of aviation armadas from border airfields, and at four in the morning on May 22, an air raid siren sounded over Kiev for the first time.

Novikov, who received the rank of lieutenant general after recertification, was immediately awakened by his adjutant and hurried to corps headquarters.

The long awaited war has begun.

But it was not the border guards who were the first to enter the battle, but the sapper units, which turned the entire border strip into a roaring and exploding hell. Bridges, roads and crossings turned into rubble and smoking craters, and barrel and rocket artillery were already working along the forward edge of the German troops, turning the troops that came under attack into a mixture of soil, metal and torn pieces of flesh.

- Fire! “And four brand new M-30 howitzers, jumping on the spot, spewed out of their vents almost a hundred kilograms of howling fiery death.

- Comrade captain! – the signalman looked up from the radio station and, moving his headphones, looked up at the battery commander. - They say from above: there is a cover!

Captain Uvarov involuntarily raised his eyes to the sky, where the spotter - an AK gyroplane - was chattering. The “Fly” was barely visible in the pre-dawn darkness, but it carried out its work confidently: first it aimed the battery at the French regimental column, which was moving towards the border, and now it directed fire at the battery of 85-mm cannons. They desperately tried to find the Soviet battery, but so far they had not succeeded: although morning had not yet come, both sides of the border were illuminated by thousands of flashes of gunfire, so aiming at the reflection of gunfire was an almost impossible task. And it didn’t make sense to use sound traps at all: to isolate the sound of a howitzer battery from the all-encompassing heavy roar is not only a trivial task, but also a completely impossible one.

And now the explosions of the nine-kilogram French “gifts” stood at a respectable distance from the battery position.

Uvarov raised his hand:

- Battery, sight the same, full charge, four rounds in quick succession - fire!

The numbers, maddened by the roar, rushed headlong towards the charging boxes...

From the board of the Kamov "Mukha" it was clearly visible how fiery columns of explosions rose up on the Eurofascist battery. The observer pilot, junior lieutenant Trofimov, pushed the commander, senior lieutenant Sergienko, in the side and pointed his finger down. The commander nodded and led his light apparatus to descend. With minimal speed, they walked around the position of the former battery in a wide circle, Trofimov clicked his camera several times to have confirmation of the successful completion of the task, and the AK slowly moved on - there would be other targets for Captain Uvarov’s battery.

At the same time, two air armadas collided in the air. The bombers and fighter escorts of the Third European Union - and this is how the united Europe began to be called with the light hand of US President Roosevelt, flying towards Soviet cities, ran into alerted air defense fighters and aviation units of the Red Army, heading west on a return visit.

That first day was remembered by the surviving pilots for the rest of their lives. Despite the categorical prohibition of ramming attacks, some Soviet pilots in a rage threw their machines head-on to the attacking German planes and took several more enemies with them to the grave.

Major Alexander Pokryshkin led a squadron of the twenty-sixth air defense fighter regiment into battle. Over the past two months, a rare day in the regiment passed without an alarming flight, although the result did not always happen. Either these were training alarms, or they managed to intercept the intruder even before the zone of responsibility of the Warsaw air defense region - Alexander did not know, just as he did not know why they were alerted at four o’clock in the morning and thrown into the sky. “It’s like a boy raised a flock of pigeons,” he thought, remembering the car with a bright yellow flag on a pole mounted in the back, which led his squadron onto the runway. As a matter of fact, Major Alexander Ivanovich Pokryshkin was not a squadron commander, but a regiment commander, but for two days now, squadron captain Ivanov had been in the hospital. Banal appendicitis is nothing to worry about, but he probably won’t be able to fly for three months. And although Alexander, in principle, completely trusted Ivanov’s deputy, Senior Lieutenant Gilaev, but still... For some reason today, as they say, his heart was not in the right place, and the major decided to lead the squadron himself. Moreover, apart from Ivanov, there were no pilots with combat experience in the squadron - only young people who graduated from college after the end of the Border War.

Pokryshkin himself shot down twelve enemy aircraft personally and two in a group in the Border War, and received the Order of the Red Banner and the rank of captain ahead of schedule. So he knew air combat, knew how to conduct it, and tried to teach his subordinates all the tricks and intricacies of fighter service.

In the cockpit of the Miga—that’s what the I-220 was called among knowledgeable pilots—the walkie-talkie came to life:

- Falcon, Falcon, I am the Nest.

- There is a Falcon.

– In square fifteen, a group target is moving towards you. Height is three and a half. Speed ​​- four hundred. How did you understand?

- Got you, Nest. Quantity?

- Undeterminable. Sokol, Sokol, how did you understand? Undetectable.

Pokryshkin whistled. “Undeterminable” means “very much.” Very very! This means war...

- Got you, Nest. We're going to intercept. Esca.

Having quickly instructed the regiment and assigned the formation of the squadron, Pokryshkin led the regiment to a height of six thousand meters and went forward. Just in case, I looked back: my wingman, junior lieutenant Golubev, was holding on as if glued. “Well done, namesake,” the major thought warmly. “It was not in vain that I chased him...” And then the time for reflection ended: enemy planes were coming towards us, in a “pig” formation.

Pokryshkin, having made a “slide,” pulled slightly ahead and determined by the silhouettes that Heinkel He-111 bombers were coming towards him. Twin-engine, without prominent cabins above the fuselage, they carried three tons of bombs each. A little higher up there was cover - Bf-109F fighters and Fw-190 high-speed interceptors. “About a regiment,” the twenty-nine-year-old veteran determined by eye. And he commanded on the radio:

- Falcons one, two! Take over the convoy. The rest - work hard! How did you understand?

The squadron commanders - Falcons one-two-three-four-five - confirmed the reception, and within a few minutes all six dozen fighters of the regiment were rushing down, attacking the uninvited guests.

The crews of the 111th Heinkels did not even have time to understand what had happened when four bombers, already smoking and blazing, fell to the ground. The fifth bomber, caught in the sights of Soviet interceptors, simply exploded in the air, scattering a cloud of hot fragments around itself. Apparently, a twenty-three millimeter caliber shell hit the bomb bay exactly. Trying to dodge shrapnel, the two bombers collided. One had its left plane torn off, the second lost its nasal glazing, and both fell down.

And a fierce battle had already begun above the bombers - a “dog dump”. Heavier, but better armed red star aircraft pulled the “thin” and “forecastle” aircraft into battle on the verticals, the same ones, in turn, tried to force the Soviet pilots to fight on the turns. However, on the verticals, Kurt Tank’s creations were only slightly inferior to the creations of Mikoyan and Gurevich, and the MiGs were not so inferior to the Friedrichs on turns, so literally a minute later a frantic carousel of high-speed air combat was spinning in the air with an unpredictable outcome.

The fast-moving “two hundred and twenties” tried to strike from above and immediately left with a climb. “One Hundred and Niners” rushed over their bombers like gadflies over a herd, or rather, like shepherd dogs trying to fight off a flock from attacking wolves.

If there had been more veterans in the Warsaw region air defense regiment, the Germans would probably have come to an end. But here numerical superiority evened the odds. On one of the MiGs, all six tracks of the fiercely attacking “one hundred and ninth” crossed, and the Russian hawk, smoking thickly, entered a deep dive, but never came out of it. Another “two hundred and twentieth” had its engine sneezing from numerous hits from defensive Heinkel machine guns. He turned away and, heavily, as if wounded, swinging from wing to wing, hobbled towards his airfield.

But the Germans also continued to suffer in full. One of the “skinny ones” caught a full burst - a good six, or even eight twenty-three-millimeter shells, and disappeared in a plump cloud of explosion. The furiously growling engine in the afterburner of the "foresock" ran headlong into a thin fiery thread of tracers of a heavy machine gun, somersaulted in the air and fell down like a stone. One of the "one hundred and elevenths", having lost both engines jammed by hits, tried to glide with the grace of a concrete beam and, accelerating, rushed towards the gray pre-dawn earth...

Finally, the Germans, having lost a good fifteen aircraft, turned back. The MiGs rushed after them, managed to shoot down another Heinkel, and then, using the last drops of gasoline, crawled back to their base.

Thanks to good training and powerful weapons, Red Army fighters shot down about two hundred enemy aircraft on the first day, and by the end of the week the total number of those shot down was close to a thousand. True, the “Stalinist falcons” also did not go without losses, but despite the fierce resistance of the enemy, Soviet attack aircraft plowed up border airfields, formations of front-line bombers hit the operational rear, and special forces units destroyed aircraft right in the parking lots using large-caliber sniper rifles. As a result, by June 8, the battle for air was, if not won by Soviet pilots, then at least reduced to a draw. Moreover, the Red Army Air Force retained a clear advantage.

Ground units also suffered losses. Managed minefields, long-range artillery fire, and plowed roads made troop movements so difficult that by the second week the Wehrmacht had advanced only fifty to one hundred kilometers. But the huge number of troops still had an effect, and a multimillion-strong wave swept the border zone.

The covering units retreated, constantly counterattacking and not engaging in major battles, and the main damage was caused by aviation and artillery, target designation for which was provided by special forces.

The most unpleasant surprise for the Nazis was the night shelling and bombing. Specially modernized SBs sneaked up at low altitude, dumped half a ton of small bombs on the heads of the aggressors and calmly walked back. Night vision devices allowed aircraft to operate at night no less efficiently than during the day, and given that the chance of running into a German fighter in pitch darkness was close to zero, it was also much calmer. In addition, the use of volumetric detonating and cluster munitions made it possible to double the area of ​​the affected surface, and the bomber could cover more than two thousand square meters with one blow.

The Germans tried to combat night bombing with searchlights, but the black-painted aircraft made a poor target in the night sky. In addition, sometimes a FOTAB fell out of the bomber, the flash of which deprived observers of vision for a long time, and the most fortunate ones - forever.

The European-fascist troops crawled to the first line of defense, based on the old, tsarist-era fortresses of Dubno - Ivangorod - Polsky - Warsaw - Novogeorgievska - Zegrze - Osowiec - Kovno, having lost more than fifty thousand people and a significant amount of equipment in border battles. Slim

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The blitzkrieg schedule crumbled into dust, but parts of the Wehrmacht stubbornly climbed forward, as if the devil were urging them on.

The first massive tank battle took place in the Lomza-Ostroleka area, where units of the second and tenth armies fought back, and with them the formation of Jewish and Belarusian militias. The third tank group of General Hoth planned the main attack there. More than three hundred Pzkpfw-IV tanks and the newest, secret Pzkpfw-V "Panther", supported by self-propelled guns, began an assault on the positions of the Western Front on the night of November 2, intending to immediately break through the defenses between the fortresses of Zegrze and Osowiec, bypass the old fortresses that had been destroyed in recent years. two years later they turned into completely modern fortified areas, and broke into operational space. The camouflage and secrecy measures taken were unprecedented, which, in a situation of low clouds and the impossibility of aerial reconnaissance, led to the fact that the tanks were able to secretly reach the concentration line.

The first to attack, like a herd of antelope scared by a predator, were outdated light tanks of German and Czech production. They were the ones who were supposed to identify hotbeds of defense and anti-tank artillery positions. Dozens of these tin boxes were burning, but still they stubbornly climbed forward. Many were left on the minefield in the form of a structure torn apart by the explosion, in which it was no longer possible to guess either the make or even the type of military vehicle, and some even managed to enter the destruction zone of anti-tank guns.

Seventy-six-millimeter shells with a cermet core pierced thin armor like eggshells, literally tearing light vehicles apart. But under fierce fire, German pioneers desperately crawled forward, removing mines, cutting wire and destroying bunkers with explosive charges and flamethrowers. Following them, panzer-grenadiers climbed through the passages made with the tenacity of predatory ants. They threw grenades into the trenches, knocking out machine gun nests and positions of automatic grenade launchers, and with the fury of the doomed they rushed at the heads of the Red Army soldiers.

The first line of trenches boiled with a bloody wave of hand-to-hand combat, and above the heads of the grappling soldiers, German panzers with Teutonic crosses on Krupp armor slowly crawled, groping for a safe path.

A fiery carousel of air combat was already spinning in the air when, not paying attention to the fighters, Pavel Sukhoi’s attack aircraft and Kurt Tank’s fighter-bombers walked over the battlefield. Together, they turned the front line of both armies into one huge bonfire, almost completely destroying both the first wave of attackers and the advanced units of the defenders.

The much better protected heavy and medium tanks of the second wave, scattering the remains of their own and others, went forward with an armored ram, miraculously finished off the surviving anti-tank guns and were about to finally break through the Russian defenses when the tanks of Moskalenko’s first mechanized army advanced towards them. After a few minutes that dragged on like damp rubber, the opponents came into actual fire range.

The 100-millimeter blanks of the ISs first struck the Krupp armor, and the 75-millimeter sub-caliber projectiles of the Fours and Panthers struck the Ural armor. Dozens of armored vehicles froze and began to smoke at once, filling the air with the smell of burning fuel, cordite and human flesh. The Soviet IS-1s, better armored and armed but less numerous, faced the Reich's tank armada head-on. The oncoming tank battle, merciless and bloody, began to boil...

The attack aircraft and fighter-bombers again thrown into the attack returned with nothing. Maybe, at the risk of losing up to fifty percent of their personnel, they would have broken through to the battlefield, but then... In the crazy crowd of steel mastodons, it was impossible to determine where they were and where they were. All that aviation could do was to cover the battlefield with a carpet of bombs, destroying both the right and the wrong. But use the ancient principle: “Kill everyone! God in heaven will recognize his own!” – neither the Luftwaffe pilots nor the Red aviators were ready.

At the end of the second hour of the battle, two tank divisions of the 6th Motorized Corps of the Wehrmacht gradually began to push back the Soviet 2nd Guards Tank Division. The guards desperately defended themselves, trying to expose the impenetrable foreheads of their vehicles to attack, pushing back the Germans over and over again, but the numerical superiority of the German vehicles began to show itself more and more clearly: it was becoming more and more difficult to stand alone against four. And the division commander, Major General of the Armored Forces Vasily Mikhailovich Alekseev, decided to bring his last reserve into battle - heavy breakthrough tanks.

The IS-2 battalion quickly entered the battle. A hail of fire and steel immediately fell on the Soviet tanks, but the reinforced multi-layer armor and dynamic protection units did not allow penetration by enemy shells even at almost point-blank range. German tanks circled in flocks around the red-star vehicles, but even the rear sheets turned out to be impenetrable to their fire. And they, looking like mighty mammoths surrounded by packs of jackals, slowly moved their mighty towers and methodically shot at cars with crosses on their armor. One hundred twenty-two-millimeter fragmentation-cumulative shells, exploding next to an enemy tank, often caused fatal damage, tearing apart tracks and tearing out rollers. Strengthening the armor, made by German engineers in the form of an applied frontal armor plate, did little to help the unlucky “fours”: a fiery stream burned a neat through hole through all layers of metal.

The breakthrough heavy tank battalion lost only five vehicles, but not a single one from enemy fire. The pioneers managed to destroy three IS-2s using backpack and easel flamethrowers. Another one was thrown with grenades by panzergrenadiers, and when the Soviet vehicle lost both tracks due to explosions, some desperate sergeant major climbed onto the armor of the engine compartment and managed to stick a magnetic mine - a moment before he was torn to pieces by a burst from a heavy machine gun. The last fifth IS-2 died, rammed by a flaming Pzkpfw-IV, behind the levers of which the black charred lips constantly screamed “Heil Hitler!” a Scharführer fanatic who burned alive.

Out of hundreds of Soviet tanks, forty-three left the battle under their own power. And one hundred and eighty-nine German vehicles were left to burn out on the field...

Miraculously, the surviving German tankers turned back, sweeping away at full speed the barrage formations of the SS Deutschland regiment, which, having lost almost a third of their strength, finally realized that they were not welcome and rolled back.

A fierce air battle broke out in the sky again. The Fw-190 fighter-bombers thrown into battle were unable to break through, encountering a mixed air corps that was enraged by the fact that the enemy was able to deceive aerial reconnaissance. He flew out in full force to seed the front line with bombs and rockets. At first, the Germans were easily pushed back, but they requested reinforcements. The red falcons did not fail to respond in kind, and for two whole days, then weakening, then flaring up with renewed vigor, in the air

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a giant meat grinder of air combat was spinning.

And on the ground, the stern gods of war thundered with hundreds of barrels, mixing the defending and advancing troops with the earth. But even here, the heirs of the German thunderer Thor failed to overcome the resistance of the red artillerymen. At some point, when the Germans brought up their heavy twenty-one centimeter guns, it seemed that the Soviet defense was about to give in, crack and collapse, like a dam under the pressure of raging water. But fiery and smoky tails suddenly stretched out from the east, and a natural barrage of fire fell on the German positions. This time, the Luftwaffe reconnaissance was not up to par: the commander of the Western Front, Marshal Timoshenko, alarmed by the situation in the area of ​​the Osovets Fortress, brought a separate heavy missile regiment of the High Command Reserve into the battle. Powerful rockets with an inertial control system carried six hundred and fifty kilograms of explosives each. From a distance of forty kilometers, they covered the positions of the Wehrmacht's heavy artillery, and then also plowed up the near rear of the Germans.

- Well, comrades, the first battle was not a problem. – Marshal Timoshenko smiled, which made him look like a well-fed cannibal. He looked around at the senior commanders of the Western Front gathered for the meeting and continued: “Everyone did a good and excellent job.” I would especially like to note the effective actions of the artillerymen of the first and fourth mechanized armies. They promptly suppressed the batteries, transferred fire in a timely manner at the request of the advanced units, and in general - well done! – Timoshenko nodded to the artillery generals. – The pilots also did not disappoint and successfully rehabilitated themselves for the breakthrough they had slammed their ears. Well, as always, our saboteurs distinguished themselves by managing to mine the roads just before the advance of Wehrmacht units. According to aerial reconnaissance, approximately two tank battalions, two motorized battalions, a corps artillery division and two infantry regiments did not reach the front line.

The brigade commander, Major General Bazhukov, nodded briefly, taking note of the marshal's praise. True, this barrel of honey was mixed with a fair fly in the ointment: one of the sabotage groups was completely destroyed, another suffered serious losses, and Novikov had already managed to “discuss” these sad results, “to sort it out properly, and punish just anyone.” Bazhukov himself was hit first, so he perceived the marshal’s praise as an attempt to sweeten the pill.

And Tymoshenko continued:

- Now about the shortcomings. The engineering and sapper units did not take the preparation of defense seriously enough. The poorly developed network of trenches led to unreasonably high losses among the infantry, and clearly not enough bunkers and dugouts were built. In addition, there have been cases of enemy field artillery breaking through the arches of fortifications. All references to insufficient preparation time are considered by the front headquarters and the Supreme Headquarters to be excuses: intelligence provided the data in a timely manner, the relevant orders and circulars were sent to the troops, and the result?! If some comrades believe that the Red Army can hold the defense in unprepared positions, then the Special Front Department is ready to help them get rid of such misconceptions!

Several commanders shivered slightly, and the head of the engineering troops of the Western Front, Major General Galitsky, simply shuddered at the prospect of communicating with the Special Department. Considering that Mehlis, an army commissar of the first rank, was appointed a member of the front’s military council, such communication with a high degree of probability could have ended fatally.

It takes a very brave person to be a coward in the Soviet army.

Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin

In the South-Western direction, hostilities developed according to a similar scenario. It took the EU troops two or three days just to cross the USSR state border line. The border troops of the NKVD and the advanced units of the Red Army fought back stubbornly and fiercely. The battles near the Dubno fortress were especially brutal.

Over the past two years, the old Tarakanovsky fort from the time of the Imperialist War has been significantly improved, its territory has been expanded, and new camouflaged air defense units and counter-batteries have appeared. The outer perimeter was replenished with reinforced concrete pillboxes, controlled minefields and anti-tank bumps, finally turning the bank of the Ikva River into a serious defensive line.

French aviation and the Luftwaffe attempted to bomb the structures of the Dubna fortress. The Germans tried especially hard, as they finally had the opportunity to use five-hundred-kilogram concrete-piercing bombs. They were prepared to overcome the Maginot Line, but after the conclusion of the Franco-German Alliance they remained unclaimed.

Early in the morning of May twenty-eighth, the day of the border troops, groups of Ju-88, He-111, NC.150, Late 570 and LeO 45 bombers, one after another, took off in waves from the airfields of Krakow, Katowice and Lemberg and, with their engines roaring annoyingly, went towards East. They were accompanied by Messerschmitts, Focke-Wulfs, Devoitins and Fleas - four fighter groups, so that in total more than four hundred vehicles took to the skies.

The Euroaviation raid was detected by VNOS ground services, and the Southwestern Front began to move. Front commander Marshal Budyonny, having received information about a massive air offensive, did not think for long. The French bombers, launched from the Krakow air base, had not yet managed to cross the state border line, and the second fighter division in full force had already risen on alert from the operational rear to meet the Eurofascists.

Listening by radiotelephone to the report of the commander of the First Air Army, Lieutenant General Chkalov, who personally headed the division, Semyon Mikhailovich bit his mustache with annoyance. That's it! Valerka, the boy, the brat, whom he had thrown on the mats of the training hall of the building more than once or twice, is going into battle! And he - a combat commander, deputy commander of a corps of special forces, head of ground transport services - was driven to the rear! And as he asked Kira, he just didn’t get down on his knees, but then...

However, Budyonny did not like to indulge in despondency for a long time, and he did not know how. Barking into the phone: “Show them, Volgar, how special forces can beat!”, he immediately contacted Headquarters and reported on the state of affairs near Dubno.

Chief of the General Staff Antonov listened attentively to the marshal’s expressive report, paused and in an even, calm voice asked:

– What are you doing?

Having learned about the flight to meet the full air division, he was silent again, and then in the same even and calm voice he advised:

– Comrade Marshal, send two more regiments from the Kyiv Air Defense there. You have an overfitting there now, so you can loosen it a little. AND

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better send twin-engine fighters. Let them work to intercept the retreating ones.

Budyonny nodded in agreement and asked to report to the Supreme Commander. Antonov agreed and disconnected from communication, and Semyon Mikhailovich contacted the commander of the Kyiv air defense zone, General Kozlovsky, and ordered two I-220 regiments to be sent to the interception zone. Having lamented and whined for the sake of order, and internally rejoicing that the formidable “our brother Budyonny” did not demand four regiments out of the five available, Kozlovsky accepted the order of the front commander for execution.

The first contact between the warring parties occurred ten kilometers from Dubno above the village of Povcha. Four Devuatin D-524 fighters discovered a pair of I-181s and joyfully rushed towards them, like hunting puppies who saw their first game in their lives...

The forward flight commander, Lieutenant Smirnov, noticed the black lines rushing across them and, shouting to his wingman: “Hold on!”, he threw his fighter into a steep upward turn. The One Hundred and Eighty-First lost to the French by twenty-five kilometers in horizontal speed, but they gained a good five seconds in the turn, and their rate of climb was higher. Smirnov, making a turn, threw the Devuatins off the tail and abruptly went into a dive. The wingman, junior lieutenant Latypov, hung behind him as if glued, so that the Soviet pilots easily jumped out from under the attack. And then they attacked themselves...

...Lieutenant Jean Demoisier Morlot whistled in through clenched teeth. These Russians, it turns out, know how to fly! An attempt to fit into the turn behind these red stars led to the fact that the damned “524” creaked, groaned and shook so much that it seemed as if it would fall to pieces right now. The devil knows what these Reds make their fighters out of, but it is a fact that they are many times stronger than the French ones!

That is OK! We will still fight! Morlot accelerated in a dive and went into a sharp right turn. One of the big-faced Russian planes was in the crosshairs for a moment, and Demoisier fired a long burst from all barrels... Canalization! This Russian spun to the left so dashingly that, as they say, he turned on his heel. And the cannon shells passed by. True, bursts from the wing machine guns still hit him, but it was not noticeable that it did any damage to him.

But the invulnerable Russian went up, and the first lieutenant could not keep up with him. The only pity is that the plane with red stars on the planes and fuselage somehow had no intention of leaving at all: a minute later he and his wingman had already fallen on top of the French, and one of the Devoitins was touched by smoky streams of tracers. Fragments of the keel flew - they just enlarged it on this model! Complained about insufficient stability - get an excellent target!

Morlot gritted his teeth: the merry fellow and joker Marcel Rogette never jumped out of the downed plane. But with what caliber do these damned communists hit, if just like that, in a second, not even scraps of the keel and rudder were left: something strange, tailless, spinning madly was already falling down...

Lieutenant Smirnov said to himself: “This is it!” - and again reached up - the French were shamelessly losing to them on the verticals. He glanced down, made sure the enemy fighters had fallen behind, and suddenly understood why the French were called "frogmen." D-524's mottled yellow-green coloring did indeed somewhat resemble frogs. Or toads. He suddenly chuckled: a folk superstition, as you know, says that a squashed frog means rain. What about French planes?..

Here, by the way, is another candidate for causing rain. Smirnov pounced on the Frenchman from above, he rushed about, trying to get out of sight, but where could he go? Shells from the double-barreled Taubin cannon hit the spotted fuselage, and a large piece of the skin flew off to the side... Aha! These are not your spittoons, the bullets from which knocked on the side of the “one hundred and eighty-one.” Knock knock, can I come in? But you can’t! Fuck you, tea is not bare duralumin. This titan does his job well. A projectile won’t hold up on a clear day, but a rifle-caliber bullet will do just fine...

Come on, brother monsieur, what if we tell you like this now? Ah-ah-ah, creature!..

Morlot barely jumped out from under the fire of both Russian fighters - the tracks ran right next to the right wing - and rushed to the side, writing completely unexpected monograms. He achieved his goal - to escape the merciless, unexpectedly accurate fire of Soviet pilots - although only halfway. The "524" of his wingman, Lieutenant Pancras, flew into a bend into the obligingly extended quad tracks of first, and then the second, Russian fighters and exploded. Morlot saw a small burning lump fly out of the flash cloud and rush towards the ground. Demoisier growled like a predatory beast, and, accelerating his plane in a dive, rushed head-on at the red-star winged enemy. The enemy rushed from side to side, tried to jump out of sight, but suddenly accepted the conditions of the game and went towards Morlo. The bearing planes in the sight sharply lengthened, the fuselage swelled...

At the last moment, the lieutenant realized that the Russian would not turn away, and even laughed.

“At least one, at least one...” he managed to whisper before both winged machines turned into a roaring, flaming ball.

Smirnov gritted his teeth and mentally said goodbye to Latypov. The guy accepted the real death of the pilot. Eternal glory to him!

By tacit agreement, both remaining planes - both Soviet and French - turned towards their own. Each had to have time to report to the main forces about the approach of the enemy, and each had to report on a short air battle that ended with a score of three - one. Or one - three, depending on how you look...

Two avalanches of aircraft, occupying echelons of four to eight thousand meters, collided, and a real massacre began in the air. Qualitative differences were somehow obscured: too many air fighters were spinning, turning and rushing into crazy attacks. Chkalov, who had already managed to shoot down one particularly impudent NC.150 - the only one that managed to jump out from under the furious onslaught of two entire squadrons, looked around and looked for an “object of special attention” in the air. Yeah, there they are... A squadron of the newest I-185s, assembled with a “minor deviation” from the general factory technology, flashed like lightning at maximum speed, immediately took down two “foresocks” and left with a climb. “Well done, Red,” Valery Pavlovich thought to himself, clearly seeing that one of the Germans was dropped to the ground by a fighter with tail number “17.” “I added one more to my list!”

Chkalov had every reason to be proud of his student. Senior Lieutenant Vasily Iosifovich Stalin, rejected from the special forces by Novikov’s ruthless order, fell into the strong and capable hands of the Red military pilots, was trained at the Kachin aviation school and went to the front. True, the leader categorically ordered his descendant not to make any concessions, but... The fighter pilots knew too well that combat in the air depends almost half on luck. Anything could happen in the air: and the puppies, who had just flown for three dozen hours, brought down from the heavens to the sinful earth the aces, who had been fighting and winning for years. And the engine failed in flight, and they fell

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hit by birds, the most experienced and literate. And strange and unusual damage occurred: nuts from the engines flew into the cockpit through the triplex, and the “legs” of the landing gear broke during landing, and the parachutes did not open at the right time...

That is why, turning a blind eye to Comrade Stalin’s order, Chkalov personally went to the plant and explained to its management the “task of the moment.” The result was the birth of twelve I-185 aircraft with “polished” titanium-steel bodies, carefully polished engines and similar numerous improvements. Of course, no country in the world had an aviation industry capable of putting aircraft of such quality into production, but it’s easy to make several machines and provide them with replacement parts as needed! So now the “Steel Squadron” was in the air, in which the senior lieutenant with the call sign “Red” acted as deputy commander.

Those German or French fighters who caught the squadron's teeth turned out to be relatively easy prey for the first-class fighters assembled in the Steel. And the fighters were truly first-class: senior lieutenant Bobrov, who shot down nine planes in Spain; Captain Pokryshev, who shot down four Finnish, two Polish and even one Latvian aircraft; Lieutenant Smirnov, who managed to chalk up four Finnish fighters; Sultan Ahmet Khan, who scored ten victories on the Polish front...

All of them were carefully selected, and now they were the “life guards” of Stalin Jr. However, these aces spared the pride of the leader’s son and never showed that they were protecting Vasily: the impetuous and proud Red could try to break away to spite the guards and get into the fight on his own to show his courage and skill.

Then a new wave of bombers appeared, this time German, and Chkalov had no time for reasoning. He sent almost an entire fighter regiment to intercept, the Focke-Wulfs rushed to the aid of their own, and the deadly carousel spun with redoubled force.

At this time, on the ground, the sixth tank corps, by the will of the commander of the third tank group, General de Gaulle, launched a frontal attack on the Dubna fortress. New tanks SOMUA S41 with long-barreled 75-mm guns and RENAULT B3 with 85-mm cannons, rattling their tracks, moved towards the line of Soviet fortifications. They shot at point-blank lines several lines of log gouges, then, under the cover of their armor, the French Zouaves and motorized riflemen made wide passages with heavy sabers in the liquid strip of steel gouges made of rails, and... the attacking wave hit the Ikva River.

Machine guns and casemate guns, which had been silent until then, struck in unison from the eastern bank. The shells of the short-barreled L-17 guns could not penetrate the armor of the French vehicles, but in several fortifications there were the latest casemate installations ZIS-7 and ZIS-8, which immediately greeted the uninvited, but long-awaited guests. Two 57-mm shells famously took out a pair of SOMUA tanks, and a three-inch sabot shell struck the side of a lumbering B3. All three immediately burst into flames, the rest of the tanks retreated, revealing motorized riflemen and zouaves. The machine gunners of the old fortress and the bunker strip immediately made it clear to the French that they could see them. After ten minutes of being exposed to furious machine-gun fire, the French retreated.

The attempt to carry out a massive artillery preparation failed before it even began. The battle in the air had already ended, but it was at that moment that air defense fighter regiments arrived at Dubno. Discovering that they were too late, the Soviet pilots began frantically looking for at least some worthy target, the destruction of which could justify their appearance. And such a target was quickly found: two heavy French artillery brigades, which had just begun to turn around from the march.

Luckily for the French, the fighters had neither bombs nor eres, but the hail of twenty-three-millimeter shells and the shower of large-caliber half-inch bullets managed to do a lot of work. The battery of Saint-Chamon M280 self-propelled mortars was completely disabled - Soviet aircraft destroyed all four twin transporters. Of the two batteries of 194-mm GPF cannons, only one gun survived, and the batteries of L13S 15-millimeter cannons lost half of their half-track tractors, and some of the guns suffered quite a bit - a gun whose breech was hit by a twenty-three millimeter aircraft projectile can hardly be called combat-ready. Only the intervention of a self-propelled anti-aircraft division that arrived in time, which immediately placed an umbrella of small-caliber shells over the beaten gunners, stopped this massacre; The I-220s withdrew, taking away several fragmentation holes in the planes, but without losing a single aircraft.

The commander of the fifth tank group, General de Gaulle, tore and screamed. Tall and awkward, he rushed around the headquarters, belligerently sticking out his long thoroughbred nose.

– Why the hell are you, Leclerc, attacking the fortress head-on with tanks?! Do you seriously think that your SOMUA are stronger than concrete casemates, huh?! And even if so, then since when did your cars learn to swim?! Have you not seen, general, that there is a river marked on the map?! Or have you forgotten how to read maps?!

An indignant and menacing nose turned to General Proix:

– And you – you, Michel, you – my old like-minded person! How could you drag your cuirassier regiment, and even with motorized rifles, into a direct attack on an unbroken defense?! Have you forgotten that back in '36 we formulated the principle of the correct use of tanks? That the times of the Great War have sunk into oblivion, when tanks broke the defenses of the Boches... that is, our German allies, working as rams. These times are gone, Michel, they are gone - and they will never come again! And you climb, like a boar onto a horn, into the enemy’s long-term defense. And what will you and I use to destroy their tanks? Let's bring the Maginot Line with us?!

The French commanders remained silent, lost, and de Gaulle dispersed more and more. Everyone got it: the artillerymen, who managed to expose themselves to enemy aircraft, and the infantrymen, who didn’t have enough sense to avoid attacking machine-gun points, and the Zouaves, who, once they went on the attack, had no reason to stop... But the aviators got it especially hard. De Gaulle with caustic irony ridiculed their attempt to destroy the Dubno fortress alone.

“You, gentlemen, seem to be too carried away by the fantastic ideas of Monsieur Wells and General Douai.” And the Bolsheviks clearly demonstrated to you the depravity of such, if I may say so, theories. However, what else can you expect from a dandy in white gloves who can only see the battlefield from a height of several kilometers?

However, this scolding, although useful, did not provide any solution. And it was needed - just

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necessary. And as soon as possible, before the Russians managed to grind all the best troops of the Third European Union right on their borders.

De Gaulle, who after the tragic incident with Heinz Guderian remained the only theorist of the use of tanks in the united forces of the Eurofascists, made the right decision. Leaving barriers against the never-taken fortress of Dubno, he sent the bulk of his troops around, with his general direction being Starokonstantinov, Lyubar and Zhitomir. French tank and motorized divisions, with the support of Hungarian and Italian units, knocked down the light barriers of the Red Army and rushed forward.

And they immediately encountered tank and mechanized divisions of the Red Army advancing towards them. On the Belogorye - Teofipol line, an oncoming tank battle unfolded, in comparison with which the Battle of Osovets somehow did not look...

Captain Uvarov was sitting on the miraculously preserved roof of a once white, but now smoked, black hut. The forward OP of his battery was located here, and although it was not appropriate for the commander to hang around on the front line, he needed to notice enemy tanks before they noticed you. Only in this case would his howitzer battery, which had lost half of its tractors during yesterday's raid by French planes, have at least a ghostly chance of surviving. Like those three companies, which just yesterday were a full-blooded regiment, and now - just a thin chain of forward guards of a battery and a self-propelled anti-aircraft division, the Japanese emperor knows by what wind he was brought to their location. Twin twenty-three-millimeter self-propelled guns, covered with light anti-fragmentation armor, work well against enemy aircraft, but they have no hope against tanks. It is not even known whether they will have enough speed to escape, if anything.

However, the division commander, Senior Lieutenant Lantsov, apparently had no intention of running away anywhere, as he lay on the sun-warmed straw next to Uvarov and smoked, looking into the high summer sky.

-What's on the horizon, captain? – he asked lazily, throwing aside his cigarette butt. -Can’t see the land?

Uvarov winced: he could not stand empty jokes. Although Lantsov did not look like a dummy: a couple of medals and a Red Star on his chest testified that in the last war the elder coward did not celebrate and did not sit out in the rear. And the badge for being wounded also said something. That’s why Dmitry looked up from his binoculars for a second and answered:

- Land in bulk. It's enough to bury you and me a hundred times.

“Well...” Lantsov drawled and lit a new cigarette. - Let the burrows grow first...

With these words, he turned over on his stomach and also raised the binoculars to his eyes.

- O-pa! And here is the first one that has grown back. Look, Dimon. Landmark nine, left fifty...

Uvarov immediately turned and looked where Mikhail Lantsov said. To the left of the landmark - a crooked, spreading, lonely elm tree - three tanks were crawling. "Somua." Two new ones with long three-inch guns and one old one, with a short thin match of a forty-seven-millimeter gun in a small turret.

“Advanced patrol,” Dmitry said into the void. “We won’t touch it, let the mahra work.”

He raised a microphone to his mouth and informed the acting commander of the former regiment, Captain Barsukov, that the artillery would not expose itself. Vasily Barsukov paused in response, then spat out hoarsely:

- OK. - In such a tone, as if he had cursed Uvarov with choice obscenities.

“If I had more armored personnel, I would try to help,” Lantsov also said into the void.

Uvarov remained silent. But what can you say if you already know that the anti-aircraft guns have armor-piercing shells from the reserve “back” – all right? Mikhail did not say where Lantsov’s subordinates spent their RBC, and Dmitry did not ask. Nor did he ask where the mechanized regiment, which was supposed to include an anti-aircraft gunner division, had actually gone to. Over the past five days of continuous fighting, the units have been mixed so thoroughly and so efficiently that they will deal with the “lost ones” only after the victory. If they survive by then...

Cuirassier Major Joel Toufe went on reconnaissance in person. Because since yesterday he had no idea where he was or where the others had gone. Yesterday, the third cuirassier regiment, in which Major Tufe had the honor to serve, flew into Russian tanks from all angles. And these were not the already familiar T-28A, with which the S41 and S40 cuirassiers fought almost on an equal footing. These looked like childhood nightmares come to life: squat, streamlined, with impenetrable armor and turrets pulled back, from which guns of monstrous caliber were fired. The third cuirassier and the brigade of Senegalese riflemen were saved from complete defeat only by the fact that there were few Russians - thirty vehicles, no more. True, they still had armored cars and armored personnel carriers, which cheerfully and at a good pace dealt with the shooters from distant Africa, but the cuirassiers took it out on them: not only the French cars, but also about forty Russians were left smoking and burning out on the field. in varying degrees of damage. True, there was only one tank among them, and even that one, it seems, was burned not by SOMUA, but by desperate Senegalese blacks...

In short, in the midst of the battle, the major lost contact with the regiment and considered it best to get out of this meat grinder. After being hit by several small-caliber shells, the command tank lost communication - the radio was out of order, but, fortunately, the damage was limited to that. Except that the driver was seriously shell-shocked, and they had to take another one from the damaged tank.

The battalion of the third cuirassier regiment, in company with a battalion of Senegalese and some dubious Italians, numbering up to two battalions, with two self-propelled guns, advanced all night in the direction indicated on the map by a thick blue arrow, but when dawn broke, Tufe was irritated to discover that the terrain was the map has nothing to do with the area in which they are located. We need to send reconnaissance...

Tufe’s first thought was to send Italian allies into reconnaissance - you wouldn’t get much out of them anyway, but then he decided that trusting the Italians with such a serious matter as reconnaissance was as stupid as sending these pasta guys to war. They are well-known warriors: out of fear they will tell such stories that the entire atlas of the world will not be enough to figure out where you are.

It would have been possible, of course, to send the Senegalese on reconnaissance, but the major knew from experience: these violent blacks recognize only one option for reconnaissance - by combat. And since it is completely unknown where their difficult military fate has taken them across the expanses of this incomprehensible Russia, the blacks can easily launch an attack on a reinforced tank regiment hiding somewhere nearby. Or - to the division. Or - on the body... And it’s not that the Senegalese were especially sorry - there are a lot of blacks in Africa! - but after the Russians chew through the scouts, they will certainly want to know where these scouts came from. And in the process of recognition they

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they will definitely find him - Joel Toufe, but this was not part of the major’s plans. It didn't fit at all. That’s why he sent tanks for reconnaissance, and in order to get information, as they say, first-hand, he went with the scouts himself. Still, the command vehicle has some advantages...

The tanks crawled past a lone elm tree, passed the intersection of two paths and confidently moved towards the farmstead, where the observation post was located. Lantsov, looking closely at the spotted Frenchmen, chuckled and said:

“Well, okay, I’ll go to my people,” he slid down from the thatched roof. Uvarov, without looking up from his binoculars, muttered:

- Come on, come on.

The French had already approached about five hundred meters to the outskirts of the farm, but for some reason the captain was sure that they would not notice him. And he turned out to be right: they didn’t notice him. Or they didn’t pay attention because the French had no time for it.

On the left flank, a camouflaged heavy-duty grenade launcher suddenly came to life and showered all three vehicles with a rain of its thirty-millimeter shells. They did not cause any visible damage to two tanks, but the third, closest to the grenade launcher, instantly lost its right track. He spun around absurdly on the spot—the grenade launcher apparently had been waiting for it. A short burst rumbled, which left the Frenchman without a second track.

Opening indirect fire, the two surviving tanks rushed forward, trying to escape from the shelling, and at the same time to bypass the impudent shooter on both sides, squeeze them into pincers and count as their crippled fellow. Not so! The outdated S40 shuddered from the explosion of a bunch of hand grenades and stopped as if it had run into an invisible barrier. Immediately the second bunch hit him in the engine compartment, a low flame blazed, and brown smoke poured out of the tank.

The third tank considered it better not to get involved and, turning around on the spot, boldly ran away. Uvarov called Barsukov again:

- Well, Vasily, you have some good guys!

- Well, like this…

- Send the crew out of the first tank. And let the positions be changed. If I’m not mistaken,” Dmitry looked at his watch, “then in forty to forty-five minutes we should expect a second visit.

“In an expanded composition,” Captain Barsukov laughed and immediately asked: “Should I tumble around alone again, or will you help me?”

- We'll see about the situation. Or rather, by the number of new arrivals.

- Well, well... You, wood grouse, are always trying to ride into heaven on our backs...

Uvarov imagined the skinny back of the skinny Captain Barsukov, who resembled a skin-covered skeleton rather than an ordinary person, and grinned. Then he laid out a map next to him and began to conjure with a circle and a ruler, marking sectors of fire and affected areas.

Tufe was angry. The reconnaissance results were zero: he was never able to get his bearings on the terrain, but he managed to run into a well-organized ambush, which cost him two vehicles with crews. And what’s most offensive is that I couldn’t blame anyone but myself for the losses. No way.

Through the triplex of the commander's cupola, the major saw how the crew tried to get out of the burning S40, but the Russian machine gun stopped this attempt in the bud. The driver-mechanic somersaulted like a stricken hare and stretched out next to the burning car, and the commander never got out of the aft turret hatch, hanging half-limp from a rag doll.

No one got out of the second car, and Tufe sincerely prayed that everyone from its crew would die, because if they were alive, they would fall into the hands of the Bolsheviks...

Poles-emigrants, who appeared in France in great numbers, unanimously spoke about the atrocities of the Reds, about the inhuman torture to which they subjected brave Poles who were not lucky enough to be captured, and the major did not wish such a terrible fate for any of his soldiers and officers.

However, something had to be done, and Tufe hurried to his own. Now he is organizing an attack, and the Russians will pay dearly for the death of the brave sons of beautiful France!

This “but suddenly” is often found in stories. The authors are right: life is so full of surprises!

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

Captain Uvarov once again looked at the remains of a large radio station, which was torn apart by a random burst of air cannon. And now you can’t even figure out who tried so hard - your own or someone else’s? Dmitry didn't care at all. I also felt desperately sorry for the battery gyroplane, which died almost simultaneously with the radio. Two planes with crosses on the wings and a swastika spider on the tail approached him at low altitude, and... True, the guys from the spotter still managed to send one of the enemies to the next world by shooting an eres into him, but this did not change anything: the battery was without "all-seeing eye" It’s also good that the crew survived – well, not exactly, but at least alive. These gyroplanes came up with a great idea: they hit you, and the propeller spins and, like an ash seed, gently lowers you to the ground. So Sergienko and Trofimov are alive, although they were thoroughly crushed...

But now there is no connection at all with the command. If “Mukha” had been intact, they would have sent to look for it, but otherwise...

- Comrade captain, the tankers were delivered here. Comrade Captain Barsukov asks: will you come for interrogation?

Uvarov turned around. In front of him stood a short Kalmyk shooter. Dmitry tensed and remembered his last name: Bubeev. It was strange to see a Kalmyk in the motorized rifles - they mostly served in the cavalry, but this doesn’t happen in life.

“I’ll be right there, fighter,” Uvarov pulled down his tunic and stood up. - Tell them not to start without me.

The interrogation had to be conducted by Lantsov and Sergeant Gamaleev, who alone knew French. Soviet riflemen picked the French out of the tank with the dexterity of a Bengal tiger who decided to feast on a turtle. They covered all the viewing slots and instruments of the tank with their overcoats, then tapped the armor with their butts, and Sergeant Gamaleev informed the chickened-out Gauls that mines had already been placed on their armor. And that now the future fate of the tankers is in their own hands: if they want to live, let them go out. Well, if not, then, in general, they don’t insist. Four French tankers flew out of the armored box, like traffic jams from the Abrau-Durso, and immediately fell into the friendly embrace of the Red Army.

The motorized riflemen were peace-loving, and therefore simply took away the weapons from the French, without even bothering to hit them in the neck. The only casualty was Lieutenant Lele, who tried to protest when Sergeant Gamaleev fished a flask of cognac from the pocket of his overalls. But the sergeant, in good French, advised Lela to shut up, accompanying his advice with a hefty poke in the ribs.

During interrogation, the tankers were stubborn at first, but after a couple of punches and a promise to shoot everyone in such and such’s mother’s house, they became much more talkative. They spoke honestly about the forces commanded by Major Tufe, which plunged all three commanders into a state of deep thought.

Barsukov was the first to break the silence:

- Hey, Uvarych, can you cover them as they approach?

Uvarov just gritted his teeth:

“I can, but there’s just one hitch.” Who will adjust the fire?

All the commanders present grew stern at once. Correction without the all-seeing eye of the “Fly” is suicide. Almost

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guaranteed. Because you have to sit far ahead of the main line of defense, and no one can promise you that enemy tanks won’t come right at you. But that’s not all: the radios at the disposal of the combined detachment were still weak, with a range of no more than ten kilometers. And that's the best case scenario. Reliable communication will be for a maximum of five keme, which means that the guns will have to be aimed when the French just begin to change from marching to combat formation. Therefore, you will have to watch almost openly, otherwise you may not even notice where they begin to turn around to attack.

“Okay,” Barsukov suddenly slammed the box that replaced the table. - Give me your map - I’ll work as a spotter for you. Otherwise, my guys will be completely smashed.

Major Toufe briefly outlined the task, and thirty-eight tanks, surrounded by a landing party of Senegalese, moved forward. Some of the Senegalese riflemen, who did not have enough space on the armor, and the pastamen stomped on foot. In the rear of the column, two Bassotto self-propelled guns were puffing their exhausts - one of the few decent representatives of the crazy Italian tank building.

Joel Toufay, following all the rules of military science, chose a place in the middle of the column. This place was the most suitable for the commander: everything was visible and safe. If Russian aircraft attack, they will hit you either on the head or on the tail of the column. The middle is usually not touched, so the commanders choose it.

Tufe did not hear the sound of an approaching shell. And he never knew whether the unknown artilleryman was aware of the tactical cunning of the commanders or not. A heavy howitzer shell struck almost close to the commander’s S41 and knocked it over on its side. The major mercifully hit his head against the armor, so he did not hear the wild screams of the crew, and did not tear the warped hatches in inhuman horror in those last few moments that remained before the explosion of the ammunition...

Captain Vasily Barsukov pressed himself into the ground and shouted into the microphone:

- First, I am Fly! There is a cover! Eat!

At the battery, Captain Uvarov waved his hand and commanded:

- Battery! The sight is the same, four shells in rapid succession... fire!!!

The Senegalese heard the whistle of incoming shells and rushed around in search of cover. But the whistle of the projectile can be heard for two or three seconds - no more. And in two or three seconds you can’t really run away or hide anywhere. Twenty one and a half pound shells fell on the column like fire from heaven, and for a moment it seemed that a dress rehearsal for the apocalypse was taking place on the road.

However, the first impression was, alas, deceptive. Of course, the Senegalese riflemen got the worst of it, but the tanks themselves – not so much. In addition to the commander's one, only one more SOMUA S40 was destroyed, and a dozen more French vehicles were damaged, but unfortunately not fatal. Some had their caterpillar cut off by shrapnel, some had a jagged piece of metal stuck in the gap between the fender and the bulwark, jamming the sloth, somewhere the triplex was chipped by an impact - but in general the tanks did not lose their combat effectiveness.

The Italians also avoided heavy losses: the legendary courage of the descendants of the Roman legionaries kept them in the rear, so the Bersaglieri escaped with a dozen wounded.

Major Pupi took command of the surviving French. At first he decided to give his tankers time to repair themselves, but the next salvo from an invisible but very sensitive howitzer battery made him realize that the delay in the targeted square could be his last mistake. Therefore, Major Pupi ordered to continue advancing and deploying for the attack according to the previously planned plan, and ordered the crews of the damaged vehicles to sit under the armor and wait for the end of the shelling, and only then begin repairs and catch up with the victorious march of the advancing EU troops.

Twenty tanks quickly rushed forward and turned around along the front with a left ledge. The remnants of the Senegalese and the Italians cursing the Madonna formed three infantry chains, and this entire army launched an attack on the farm, in which the bloodthirsty and merciless cowardly Bolsheviks settled.

Obeying the commands of Captain Uvarov, the howitzer battery urgently changed its sight. The soldiers, straining, pulled out the ploughshares dug into the ground, hooting and heckling in unison, raised their frames, deployed the guns and pulled out the treasured cumulative armor-piercing shells from the charging boxes. The French must have not yet discerned the location of the gunners, because they continued to move forward, stubbornly exposing their sides to a direct shot. And he was not slow to burst out...

– Disassemble the goals! Strike when ready!

- First! Armor-burning! Full charge! Sight - one hundred and twenty, lead - three quarters... Fire!

M-30 jumped in place, spitting out a long tongue of fire. The armor-piercing one howled as it rushed towards the target, and immediately the S41 on the right flank jerked and froze. And a second later, an almost invisible transparent flame danced over his engine compartment, and a column of black smoke swept out to the heavens. And then another tank stood up - it was overtaken by a shell from the battery’s fourth gun.

The locks jerked open the bolts, brass cylinders of cartridges jumped and rang on the ground, and the loading numbers were already driving new loads and cartridges with charges into the barrels. Shots echoed loudly again, the howitzers jumped merrily in place, but four tanks were already ablaze on the field. By the number of shells.

This time it finally dawned on the French that they were being killed. The right flank of the battered cuirassier battalion turned and rushed forward at maximum speed, right at the position of the howitzer battery.

The M-30s managed to bang again, sending a dozen brave Frenchmen back to the Gallic paradise, when the surviving tanks burst into the battery. One of the howitzers hit the approaching spotted armor point-blank. The loader, apparently, was in a hurry, and the projectile turned out to be high-explosive, but this was enough: from the terrible blow, the SOMUA’s welds could not withstand it, and the armored hull, which seemed so powerful, split into two parts, like a rotten egg. Immediately, the neighbor of the unlucky tank turned sharply and walked over the howitzer with its tracks, breaking and tearing steel and human flesh.

The gunner of the second gun, junior sergeant Kireev, howled like a wounded animal, grabbed two heavy shells under his armpits and rushed under the nearest S41. It crashed, blazed, and the tank froze with its turret absurdly tilted...

The French were still spinning on the battery, crushing and destroying heavy guns, furiously avenging their dead comrades, when, cutting through the roar and roar of the battle, a long burst struck. A good two dozen twenty-three-millimeter shells viciously tore into the armor of the nearest SOMUA. Individually, they would never have penetrated the thick four-centimeter armor, but there were many of them, and Senior Lieutenant Lantsov carefully placed them almost at one point. A long tongue of flame burst out of the engine of the damaged vehicle, and almost immediately the tank seemed to jump - the ammunition detonated from the instant heat.

Before the French came to their senses, the anti-aircraft gunners managed to knock out another tank, after which a desperately dangerous game began: four anti-aircraft gunners rushed around

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field, dodging shots from almost a dozen tanks.

The light self-propelled guns had only anti-fragmentation protection, and even then it was not complete, and at first glance it seemed that they had no chance of withstanding this confrontation. But the division commander knew what he was doing when getting involved in battle: any tank that stopped to fire an aimed shot immediately fell under a real shower of small-caliber shells. Maybe they didn’t penetrate the armor, but they stunned the crew, broke the triplex viewing slits and optical instruments, knocked out hot fragments from the inside, stinging the crew like rabid monster hornets...

Moreover, the artillerymen who survived on the battery did not celebrate the coward. Shells and cartridges with charges flew under the tracks of the French vehicles, to which hand grenades were tied with scraps of tunics, undershirts or waist belts.

One of the SOMUA received such a “gift” right under the evacuation hatch in the bottom - the force of the explosion tore it off the valve and crushed it inside. It is unknown which deity saved the ammunition from detonation, but the tank crews themselves suffered a fair amount from the hot gases. The burned and half-blind Frenchmen began to climb out, but the battery’s carbines immediately began to crackle, and the tankers’ torment quickly ended.

And the anti-aircraft self-propelled guns were still rushing around like crazy hares and desperately shooting at the remains of their ammunition. Another tank began to smoke, then another...

At this moment, the armor-piercing tracer finally found one of the self-propelled guns and hit it directly in the forehead. The self-propelled gun jumped in place, was enveloped in smoke and flame and froze, bending the thin barrels of its twin guns to the ground. Not one of the crew escaped...

Captain Uvarov, groaning from the effort, threw a charging box with a lemon stuck into it under the tank approaching him. For a moment, a shaggy bush of black fire rose, the captain was lifted by a giant hand and thrown back like a kitten. His vision went dark from the impact, and Uvarov lost consciousness, and therefore did not see how the explosion caused the tank to rear up, like a restive horse, froze for a split second, swayed and fell back. And he had not yet seen how Lantsov’s gun, engulfed in fire, suddenly rushed forward and hit S41 in the side with all its might. The cars stood up like boxers in a clinch, the flames from the self-propelled gun happily jumped onto the tank, engulfed it, and soon they turned into one giant bonfire...

There was also a fierce battle at the positions of the Soviet riflemen. Captain Barsukov's subordinates managed to burn both Italian self-propelled guns and the three S40 tanks that Major Pupi left to support the remnants of the Senegalese and Bersaglieri. But the Italians and blacks had already broken into the Russian trenches, and hand-to-hand fighting was now in full swing there. In the cramped trenches and communication passages, brutalized people cut each other with fins and bladed bayonets, beat each other with grenades clenched in their fists, strangled and crushed each other with their bare hands. Initially there were fewer Soviet riflemen, but while the Senegalese and Italians were getting to the trenches, they were thoroughly thinned out, so now victory did not want to lean towards either side...

- Commander, I report: in square seven-be one of our French is f... t! And the quality of the f...t is so high that people are envious!

Senior Lieutenant Kovalev leaned out of the turret of his IS up to his waist and peered through his binoculars for a long time. I can not see anything. Oh, damn, it’s good for the commander of the second platoon, Mishka Nikolsky: he rolled forward in his armored cars, and he’s admiring it. And you're like blind here! Panikovsky, damn it!

Frustrated, Kovalev dived back into the tower and shouted into the microphone:

- Forward! Second, don’t interfere yet: now we’ll all come up and sort it out.

Three IS-1s, accompanied by eight armored personnel carriers, rushed forward, afraid of not being in time for the general fun. The senior lieutenant drove his company at top speed, and in the meantime he reported to the battalion commander that a suspicious noise ahead was a battle that one of the lost ones was waging against the French. The battalion commander croaked something approving, although behind the noise of the engine it was not fully understood by Kovalev, but that’s not the main thing! The main thing is that Captain Akhmetov did not demand that the company return to the route, which means there is a chance to finally take part in a real battle!

The ISs flew out onto a low hill, the company commander clung to the eyepieces of the periscope and...

...Uvarov woke up. There was a noise in my head as if the latest IS-1 tank had been pushed there, under the skull bone. And it seems not just one, but perhaps a whole platoon...

The captain opened his eyes with difficulty and was amazed: the IS actually flew past him. Then he suddenly stopped, a smoky stream of a shot came off the gun barrel, but for some reason Uvarov did not hear the sound.

The captain rose with difficulty. From the positions of his battery, where the only surviving howitzer stood lonely, enemy vehicles were hastily retreating. Bright lights flashed on their trunks - the French snapped, but apparently to no avail. But they got it hard: four cars were already blazing with smokey fires, another was desperately smoking, and nearby there was some kind of strange structure, most similar to a bathtub, only for some reason - on tracks...

Further on, the trenches of Barsukov’s riflemen became visible, near which stood several hefty six-wheeled armored personnel carriers. Motorized riflemen in their native Red Army uniforms poured out of them like peas and immediately jumped into the trenches. And a few French and Italians were running away across the field after the tanks. But no one was going to let them escape: two armored vehicles and two tracked armored personnel carriers were already rushing after them.

Uvarov felt some movement near him and turned his head. It was so difficult for him that he groaned through his teeth and was again amazed that he did not hear the groan. He tried to raise his eyes, failed and threw his head back.

Standing right in front of him was a motorized rifle lieutenant who, apparently, was saying something. In any case, his lips were moving.

“Captain Uvarov,” Dmitry croaked. – Commander of the howitzer battery of the one hundred and sixth artillery regiment, ninth mechanized division...

The lieutenant nodded, then waved his hand. Two people with a canvas stretcher jumped out from somewhere, carefully laid Uvarov down and carried him somewhere. For a moment it seemed to the captain that he was sailing in a boat on the sea, and he became dizzy...

“...Captain Uvarov,” Nikolsky reported. - From the “nine”.

Kovalev winced. The fate of the 9th Mechanized Division was unenviable: early in the morning, when night sights no longer provided an advantage, it came across two full-blooded German tank divisions. The oncoming meat grinder was terrible and cruel, and although the Soviet tank crews showed the finders where and how the crayfish spend the winter, all that remained of them were scattered units, which, having lost centralized leadership, slowly retreated to the east.

- Clear. And who are the rest?

Nikolsky lowered his eyes for a second:

- And the rest, Lesh... In general, the rest are only thirty-two people. Well, maybe they missed someone else who was wounded...

Kovalev wiped his sweaty forehead and swallowed. My throat suddenly felt sore, as happens after strong tobacco.

- Was it?

“Well...” Nikolsky hesitated again. - They say three companies of riflemen, a division of anti-aircraft gunners and a battery.

“And they’re gouged out,” Kovalev looked around the battlefield, “guess it’s a tank regiment?” And no less Italians

Page 16 of 17

the battalion will be... was...

The commanders fell silent. Three dozen people, blackened from fatigue and gunpowder smoke, walked past. No, not just people - fighters! Each carried their own weapons - rifles, machine guns and even one mounted grenade launcher.

“Fighters,” Kovalev called out to them. - Who is the eldest?

One, dark and gray-haired, separated from the short column. He came up and saluted:

- Corporal Beroev Umid, comrade senior lieutenant...

- Listen, corporal... I’m not ordering, I ask: take the wounded and prisoners. We have to catch up with our own, and here...

Beroev looked at the fifty prisoners, at the short line of stretchers, silently nodded and went to his own. Kovalev did not pay attention to the insubordination and turned to Nikolsky:

- Come on, Mishka, gather everyone. And so we fell behind...

The blow that de Gaulle had so successfully planned ran into a counter blow, no less competently and sensibly planned by Budyonny. Realizing the weakness of the defense of his left, southern flank, Semyon Mikhailovich concentrated most of his mobile and strike formations here, covering them with a reliable air “umbrella” of the Chkalov Air Army.

And when de Gaulle threw his tanks forward into the Ukrainian steppes, intending to demonstrate to the whole world on their plains the correctness of the calculations and calculations of his theory, Marshal Budyonny was ready for this. And in the steppes of Ukraine, on the endless southern plains, two waves of monstrous force collided head-on.

The oncoming battle, which involved more than three million soldiers and officers, almost six thousand tanks, tens of thousands of artillery pieces and mortars from above, probably resembled a worldwide cataclysm. The flame of shots that do not stop for a minute, the annoying roar, now weakening, then growing again and driving you crazy. Smoke, covering everything from horizon to horizon, in which, like ghosts, some terrible, irrational, unlike anything else shadows rush about...

- …Stop! - and Lieutenant Colonel Makhrov, no longer relying on the TPU and the strength of his lungs, kicked driver Tarugin.

He instantly braked, and the IS-2 stood up, like a rhinoceros trying to butt the enemy.

A gun gasped loudly next to Makhrov, causing the entire multi-ton colossus of the tank to shudder. Loader Ivakin pulled the bolt handle, and a spent cartridge casing jumped under his feet with a piercing ringing sound, and the turret was immediately filled with the sour smell of burnt cordite. The lieutenant colonel coughed and kicked Tarugin again. The friction clutches howled like evil spirits, and the IS heavily, like the same rhinoceros, jumped forward.

Through the commander's periscope, Makhrov saw how a twenty-five-kilogram fragmentation-cumulative projectile crashed exactly into the black cross on the turret of the angular German, and how now this turret was flying, absurdly waving its barrel. But there was no time to be distracted: hell was raging all around, and it took all your attention and a lot of luck not to fall from this hell on earth into the one below it.

It was here, near an inconspicuous village with the telling name Moskalevka, that the best units of the warring sides - the SS Viking Panzer Division and the 1st Guards Mechanized Division of the Red Army - clashed chest to chest. Both divisions were reinforced: the Vikings with the fourth heavy French tank brigade, the guards with the fourth mechanized breakthrough brigade of the RGK. The latter included a battalion of IS-2 heavy tanks, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Makhrov.

An SS tank battalion clung to the ruins of Moskalevka. Pzkpfw-VI "Tiger-II" - the newest and most secret brainchild of the mad genius Ferdinand Porsche - turned out to be one of the few European combat vehicles that were not inferior to the Soviet IS-1. They were similar in appearance: they had rear-mounted turrets and long barrels topped with broken muzzle brake cones. But that’s where the similarity ended: the Germans were somehow chopped, angular and rather resembled some kind of dinosaurs - just as angular, powerful, as if unreal. The “Stalins” were beautiful with the terrible beauty of hunting tigers or leopards, which captivates the gaze of visitors to zoos and circuses for a long time. As if flattened to the ground, smooth outlines, with licked rounded towers, they looked much more like tigers than their opponents.

Russians and Germans collided and grabbed each other by the throat. Neither the SS men nor the guards were willing to give in. At first. Then they couldn’t, just as boxers who entered a clinch cannot disperse, just as heavyweight wrestlers fighting on the ground cannot break the distance. Each side cried out for help, because just a little more, one more, slightest effort, and...

And help came. To both sides...

You should come to terms with the fact that every decision is doubtful, because it is in the order of things that, having avoided one trouble, you find yourself in another.

Niccolo Machiavelli

Just at the time when the tank armadas met at Moskalevka, Paul Heling von Lanzenauer was sitting in his headquarters and sadly went through the reports of his officers. The 800th Special Purpose Regiment "Brandenburg", deployed as quickly as possible into a brigade of five thousand, virtually ceased to exist. The brigade lost three and a half thousand combat personnel killed, captured and missing, but the worst thing is that none of the tasks assigned to it were even half completed. Lanzenauer had the complete feeling that he was a schoolboy who got involved in a fight between grown men. Now he was called to Hitler’s headquarters with a report, and he had absolutely no idea what he would say to the Fuhrer and how to justify himself. Superbly prepared and well-trained sabotage groups were destroyed by Soviet troops in their rear areas as if they were cockroaches that had jumped out into the light in the kitchen. The last case did not fit into any framework at all. Some wild Mongols or Kyrgyz from among a detachment of military construction workers beat a group of armed saboteurs with shovels, like village thieves.

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Notes

The RCA Building is the former name of one of the skyscrapers in New York (now called GE). The building is part of Rockefeller Center. For a long time, the Rockefeller office was located on the fifty-sixth floor (office 5600).

Perfecto is a type of cigar that is thicker in the middle than at the edges. Colorado is the color of a brown cigar.

Commy is a common English abbreviation for communists and communist regimes.

Page 17 of 17

(English) - “red neck” - a nickname for southern farmers. In a broader sense, Southerners in general.

Old Mom is an American allegorical name for Great Britain, coined by President Roosevelt.

Abbreviation for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. This name was given to parts of the dominions of Australia and New Zealand that took part in the First World War.

Rockefeller is referring to the famous American propaganda song “Over There” by composer J. Hersey, calling on Americans to intervene in the war on the side of the Entente. It begins with "Johnny, get your gun."

The following is a text that is in no way the imagination of the authors. The real Lend-Lease law is presented, which in real history was adopted on 03/11/1941.

This fighter was not accepted into service in the Republic of Ingushetia. It was a further development of the MiG-1 and MiG-3. He was armed with two cannons and a heavy machine gun.

A rank in the Japanese Army corresponding to the rank of lieutenant general.

Masaharu Homma (1888–1946) was a Japanese military leader who defeated General MacArthur in the Philippines. He had information about the unsightly actions (cowardice and incompetence) of the said general. At the request of MacArthur, who was afraid of publicity, he was declared a war criminal and hanged.

The Japanese language does not have the sounds “l” and “sch”, and also has its own rules for voicing and softening consonants. Even Japanese who know Russian well rarely manage to pronounce the Russian hard “l”.

In 1884, the Baltic provinces received this name. In the Republic of Ingushetia, this name was no longer introduced after the Great October Revolution, but in this reality, the Baltic region appeared as part of the RSFSR along with Krasnoyarsk, Krasnodar and other regions.

Kosygin Alexey Nikolaevich (1904–1980) – Soviet statesman. Since 1940 - Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR.

The Pomeranian position is a fortification system created by the Germans in the 20-30s of the 20th century. Defended German Pomerania from the claims of the Poles. It covered the mouth of the Oder and was located on the German-Polish border (some of the fortifications were located several kilometers from the border).

This is not the authors' imagination. In 1942, when the likelihood of Turkey entering the war on the side of Hitler’s Germany was extremely high, a massive enrollment of volunteers in the people’s militia divisions began in Armenia. Many came with their own weapons, including ninety-seven-year-old Mesrop Vagenovich Manukyan, who came to the assembly point with his own rifle from the Russian-Turkish War of 1877–1878.

Bunkichi Imamoto (1895–1964) – one of the leaders of the Communist Party of Japan, a prominent figure in the Comintern. In 1931, he arrived in Japan from Moscow with recommendations from the Comintern on the actions of the Japanese Communist Party. Arrested in 1932. He was released from prison in RI in 1945.

The Great Atrocity (Armenian) is the name of the Armenian genocide carried out by the Turks in the period 1915–1923.

An alternative aircraft is a version of the TB-700 long-range heavy bomber, a radar reconnaissance aircraft. Further development of the TB-7 (Pe-8) aircraft - equipped with M-82 engines, with a central supercharger unit and a pressurized cabin.

Autogyroplane designed by Kamov (“Artillery Spotter”). Speed ​​– 176 km/h, maximum flight altitude – 4700 m. It could stay in the air continuously for up to five hours. Armament: two ShKAS machine guns, two RS-82. In RI it was built only at the end of 1942 in connection with the evacuation of the plant from Smolensk.

The eighty-five-millimeter Schneider gun-howitzer was in service with the infantry divisions of the French army.

This unofficial name was given to the Soviet-Finnish, Soviet-Polish, Soviet-Latvian and Soviet-Estonian wars of 1938–1939. Taking place at almost the same time, they were considered in the USSR to be one war (which in essence they were). For more information about the course of these wars, see the book “Tactician”.

Slang name for the Bf-109F fighter.

FOTAB – photo-illuminating aerial bomb. It was used for aerial photography, and in this story for blinding air defense crews.

The name of the sapper and sapper-assault troops in the Wehrmacht.

The name of the Dubna fortress, given by the location of the main defensive structure, located near the village of Tarakanovo, Dubna district.

about the end of the 60s of the twentieth century - the generally accepted name in the USSR for the First World War.

The group is a unit of the Luftwaffe. Forty to fifty aircraft, depending on the structure. The organization of the Luftwaffe was accepted by all forces of the European Union.

Air surveillance and warning service.

Soviet casemate gun mount based on the 76-mm L-11 tank gun with a barrel length of 26.5 cal.

Soviet casemate gun mounts based on the ZIS-3 and ZIS-2 guns, respectively.

De Gaulle recalls the famous doctrine of air warfare of the Italian General Douai and the science fiction novel by H.G. Wells “The War in the Air”. In both cases, the leading role in the coming conflict was assigned to aviation, transferring other types of troops to auxiliary roles.

Short for "ammunition". “Reserve” in anti-aircraft artillery units refers to the ammunition of armor-piercing and high-explosive fragmentation shells used for self-defense from enemy ground forces.

A common nickname in the Red Army and SA for artillerymen (usually howitzers and heavy batteries).

Italian self-propelled guns. Combat weight - sixteen tons. Armor – up to 75 mm. Armament: 105 mm howitzer (105/25) and 8 mm machine gun. Crew: three people.

This is how cumulative shells were called in the Red Army and SA until the beginning of the 60s.

Tank intercom.

Since in this reality the Reich did not experience problems with copper, Porsche-designed tanks went into production. "Tiger-II" Porsche (in RI - VK 45.01 (P) Tur180, remained in the project stage) had a layout similar to the self-propelled gun "Elephant" ("Ferdinand") with a rear turret, armed with a long-barreled 88 mm gun and two machine guns, armor - like the Ferdinands: side - 80 mm, front of the hull and turret - up to 200 mm.

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Jun 27, 2017

Strategist Boris Orlov, Andrey Zemlyanoy

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Title: Strategist
Author: Boris Orlov, Andrey Zemlyanoy
Year: 2016
Genre: Action Fiction, Historical Fiction, Popadantsi

About the book “Strategist” Boris Orlov, Andrey Zemlyanoy

The book “Strategist” is the third part of the “Officer” series. Boris Orlov and Andrei Zemlyanoy touched upon a topic of interest to all patriots and lovers of Russian history - an alternative path to the formation of the Soviet Union in the 30-60s of the last century. Reading this work will be interesting for lovers of military-political strategies with a distinct historical-fiction line.

The main character of the story is our contemporary Kirill Novikov. By chance, he ends up in the USSR during the time of Stalin - a terrible era when human lives were worth almost nothing, and any innovation was perceived with distrust and could sign a death sentence. However, Kirill had a specific goal. After analyzing the mistakes of the story, he firmly decided to launch it in a different way. Technological innovations, super-powerful weapons that will greatly enhance the military potential of the USSR, an alliance with the Japanese - a rapidly developing nation - are just a few of the planned steps. It is not surprising that in a short period of time, Comrade Novikov made his way to the very top of Soviet power and launched a large-scale campaign to modernize the country.

Boris Orlov and Andrei Zemlyanoy pay special attention to the place of the Soviet Union in the international political arena. The idea of ​​the emergence of the Japanese Socialist Empire and its military-political alliance with the Soviet state is unusual. In general, in the authors’ understanding, socialism is a rapidly developing phenomenon, which in the future may overwhelm the whole world.

It is interesting to read how social perspectives are being introduced step by step into the lives of ordinary people. Perhaps if at one time the Soviet government had completed the socialist principles of building the country, history would have unfolded completely differently. This alternative, described in the book “The Strategist,” forces us to rethink our past and be more attentive to the present.

Boris Orlov and Andrei Zemlyanoy devoted most of the work to the peaceful construction of the country, but there are also battle scenes. According to this version of alternative history, the main opponents of the rapidly prospering Soviet state were England and America. “Cold” and “hot” confrontations with them drag on, devoting the reader to all the technical and strategic subtleties of the struggle.

To understand to the very depths the grandiose plan of the authors, you need to familiarize yourself with the entire series, starting with the book “Officer”. An interesting pattern can be traced here: if at first the main character subordinates the story to himself, giving it a certain vector, then in the third part the opposite trend can be traced. Kirill is just a grain of sand, driven by the powerful winds of history. It’s the same in life: you can change the world, but at a certain moment what you brought into it acquires incredible power and entails irreversible consequences.

On our website about books, you can download the site for free without registration or read online the book “Strategist” by Boris Orlov, Andrey Zemlyanoy in epub, fb2, txt, rtf, pdf formats for iPad, iPhone, Android and Kindle. The book will give you a lot of pleasant moments and real pleasure from reading. You can buy the full version from our partner. Also, here you will find the latest news from the literary world, learn the biography of your favorite authors. For beginning writers, there is a separate section with useful tips and tricks, interesting articles, thanks to which you yourself can try your hand at literary crafts.

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Andrey Zemlyanoy

Boris Orlov

Where there is asphalt, there is nothing interesting, and where it is interesting, there is no asphalt.

Br. Strugatsky. Monday starts on Saturday

Russia, Anadyr Highlands

A small mine on the Anadyr Highlands was of no interest to anyone until one of its workers found a rich layer of native gold. The places in Chukotka are wild and, in general, despite the beautiful nature and unique fauna, they have been little explored. In vast Russia there are many places no less interesting and closer to civilization.

Who let it be known that a plane with half a ton of gold on board was preparing to take off would be looked into by other people, and now an employee of the Poisk department of the Gokhran of Russia had to catch up and scold those who carried out the massacre at the mine.

By the way, the gold mines never allowed us to capture it. Of the six attackers, the Siberian guys killed two, lost three themselves, but the bandits did not get the precious metal.

A small plane with an operational search group of the Ministry of Internal Affairs was prepared for departure literally ten hours after the attack, but they had to be delayed a little, since the officer called to carry out the operation simply did not physically have time. And so, without unpacking his backpack, he left the most necessary equipment and grabbed the duty case, intending to figure it out on the spot.

Lieutenant Colonel of the active operational reserve Kirill Novikov had to go alone, since all four possible partners somehow ended up in such distant places at once that they did not even have time for a preliminary analysis. This was a definite violation of instructions, but Novikov was an experienced officer and did not see any difficulties in going on a solo search.

On the plane, the Sobrov officers looked in his direction, if not with condescension, then at least with moderate interest, as if at a tourist. They would not have taken anyone with them at all, but suddenly such high authorities called that the discussion did not take place. The guys showed up and asked the Gokhran officer to take things on board.

After takeoff, Kirill partially unpacked and changed his urban attire to a two-color summer-autumn polychromatic camouflage. Then he slowly hung up more or less useful equipment and weapons at the unloading point. Since he was pulled out of vacation, there were things that you don’t take with you on a solo search, but there weren’t that many of them, so the total weight increased only by four kilograms.

It was at that moment that the leader of the group made his way to him and, looking at the laid out junk and equipment, shook his head and extended his hand:

Valentin.

Cyrus,” the lieutenant colonel shook his strong hand and, putting aside the “Val” painted with camouflage patterns, began to fill the magazines with cartridges.

An interesting thing... - Valentin took the machine gun in his hand and, not feeling the usual weight, pulled it upward out of surprise. - What the hell?

Light alloys,” Kirill explained. - The barrel has been slightly lengthened, the muffler has been slightly modified, and all sorts of gadgets such as a sight with a thermal imager and a ballistic computer.

Yes, my Stechkin weighs about the same! - the captain will be delighted. - And God knows what we already thought. They called us from our ministry and told us to take a person from the Ministry of Finance on board. Well, we thought it was some kind of auditor.

And an auditor, and a pharmacist, and, if necessary, a proctologist... - Kirill examined the pile of things for the last time and packed his backpack again. - You see, the Ministry of Finance is a tight-fisted organization, so you have to be a jack of all trades.

Here he was lying quite a bit, but after the appointment of the purely civilian, but very active Victoria Nemenova as head of “Search,” everything changed as if by magic. The best weapons, equipment, bonuses and, most importantly, treatment of Poisk officers as their own sons. Victoria Karlovna, despite her sore legs, was not lazy to personally go to the bosses’ offices and, swearing until she was hoarse, beat out additional funding and benefits for employees.

And what's that? - the senior operational investigation team picked up a small flat package with a fastening system.

Parachute.

So Littel?

Why should he be big? - The lieutenant colonel shrugged. - Tea, not made of silk. But it has quite a capricious nature and the landing speed is decent. So it won’t suit everyone... - He put on the helmet, fastened the strap, put on the parachute and looked at the navigator. Judging by the mark on the tablet, the plane was already approaching the drop point, so here its paths diverged from the valiant law enforcement officers. And they shouldn’t have witnessed a future meaningful, but short conversation with a criminal element.

As Emerson said, “There are many things in the world of which a reasonable man might wish to remain ignorant.”

The servicemen parted quite amicably. The guys, having examined the weapons and equipment, recognized Kirill as one of their own, and, leaving for the cold northern sky, he waved goodbye and, as if turning the page, threw it all out of his head.

According to satellite scanning of the area, the four survivors went to the southwest, and now the pilot has almost brought him to the point where they were spotted for the last time.

A tablet with satellite communications allowed the Poisk employee to look down from above, adjusting the route, but mainly he relied on his experience and skills developed during ten years of hectic service in the ranks of the glorious Armed Forces of the USSR and Russia.

The decent area where the lieutenant colonel landed was located some hundred meters from the fugitives’ supposed overnight location, and, having rolled up his parachute, within a few minutes Kirill was crawling along the forest floor, looking for various interesting things. As a result, we found a couple of dozen cigarette butts, a 9x18 PM cartridge with a pinned primer, scraps of packaging from the IRP and several scraps of a dressing bag. Everything was buried or thrown away far from the place where they spent the night, which indirectly confirmed the version that experienced people took part in the attack.

Having sent a code signal to the satellite that he was “on the trail” and leaving a mark on the tree, visible only to professionals, the lieutenant colonel followed the clearly visible tracks at a light trot. According to calculations, it turned out that in a day, plus or minus a couple of hours, he would get them one way or another. Well, or they him. This is where the cards fall.

The bandits walked through the forest along the river, rightly believing that from above, on the surface of the water, any helicopter flying past would spot them. By city standards, the Anadyr River is nothing at all. About three hundred kilometers, but it’s not far if you’re on an asphalt road. But in the highlands there is no low beam at all.

Exactly 24 hours later, having made only one short stop, Kirill smelled a fire and brought his weapon into firing position.

But sliding like a shadow between the trees and guarding every shadow, he discovered only an unextinguished fire and a carelessly buried pile of bloody bandages. Apparently, the bandits believed that they had gotten away, and reduced the level of camouflage, which was only to his advantage.

The sun was already setting behind the horizon when Novikov descended into a deep gorge that cut through the mountains. It immediately became dark, and the fog that had accumulated in the lowlands did not make the situation much worse, since even in the noctavisor it was only visible a couple of meters.

Despite the fact that the officer moved extremely carefully, every sound, even a slightly crunching twig, echoed with some kind of ringing echo, as if a microphone had been suspended from it. Then to these sounds there was added some rustling and like the ringing of bells, because of which one could hear something similar to voices, but completely unintelligible. Another hundred meters, and the fog seemed to cut off. Ahead could be seen a clearing with a small fire, a body lying on its back, next to it was an old three-ruler, and seven people sitting around the fire, with their legs extended towards the fire.

Andrey Zemlyanoy, Boris Orlov

I would like to sincerely thank Evgeny Svirelshchikov, Karen Stepanovich Stepanyan and Anatoly Starukhin for their active assistance in working on the book.

A. Zemlyanoy

© Andrey Zemlyanoy, Boris Orlov, 2016

© AST Publishing House LLC, 2016

This year the winter season in New York was especially bright and festive. The rich decoration of Rockefeller Center was astounding, and even the sophisticated, world-famous onlookers of the Big Apple froze, stunned by the shimmer of electric lights, the shine of glass and nickel-plated facade decorations, and the illuminated flags that fluttered in the artificial wind. A huge statue of Atlas, similar to Mussolini, which replaced River's facade fresco depicting the hated Lenin, washed by the rays of searchlights, inspired calm confidence in the inviolability of the world order.

In the large hall of Radio City, the orchestra thundered, and hundreds of couples converged, circled and separated again, obeying the magical commands of the music. Negro waiters in snow-white jackets glided like monochrome ghosts, serving champagne and canapes with beluga caviar, the aromas of expensive perfumes mixed with the aromas of expensive cigars, creating an amazing, unique feeling of wealth, happiness and contentment. An elegant girl in a thousand-dollar dress clung to her partner in a seven-hundred-dollar suit and whispered: “Darling, this is what heaven looks like, isn’t it?”

But on the fifty-sixth floor of RCA, in the Rockefeller office, the atmosphere was far from heavenly. Prescott Bush and James Warburg circled Jerome Stonewall Bass and Joseph Kennedy like predatory hyenas around a herd of buffalo. The similarity was strengthened by the peculiar appearance of Bass, who really looked like a hefty bull.

“Tell me, Bass, don’t you think your red protégés have gone too far?” - Warburg hissed. - What the heck? Where did the alliance between the Japanese emperor and this wild mountaineer come from?

Prescott Bush nodded sharply, agreeing with the opinion of his companion, currently a friend. John Davisson Rockefeller Jr., who was sitting at the table - however, no longer the youngest, but the only one - cast a short glance from under his furrowed eyebrows at Bass and Kennedy, but remained silent, waiting for an answer. And he was not slow to respond:

- What the heck?! - Stonewall Bass growled. – I need to ask you this, Bush, and you, Warburg. Why the hell did you and your boys allow Germany to actively get involved in China, where the Japs and Russians have their own interests? Did you seriously think that these guys, armed to the teeth, would calmly watch as your Nazi buddies stole steaks from their plates?!

Now Rockefeller threw the same look towards the “hyenas”.

“Free trade...” began Victor Rothschild, who was sitting in a chair with a Perfecto Colorado made to a special personal order in his hand, but Kennedy interrupted him:

– Free trade is wonderful, Victor. But where was this free trade when you refused to approve Russian loans for high-precision machines? Where was free trade when, thanks to your German banks, Japan found itself starved of steel? “He waved his hand somewhat theatrically. “You, gentlemen, yourself pushed the Russians and Japanese into each other’s arms, and now you ask where we were looking?”

“Indeed, Victor,” said Aaron Seligmann, who was modestly sitting in the corner of the office. – Are the Germans preparing for war? Wonderful. Are the Russians preparing for war? Better! Are the Japanese ready to get into the global fray? Quite good. But one cannot be so short-sighted as to allow the Germans to play on our lawn. In the end, we all agreed here that the fight should be fair and the big guys with the big clubs will be put on an equal footing. What actually happened?

He took a small sip of weak tea from an eighteenth-century Saxon porcelain cup and continued:

– Your German partners have taken the path of restricting free trade, which we all stand for here. They intercepted all iron ore reserves from Sweden and left the Japanese high and dry, introduced new duties, or rather an embargo, on the supply of equipment to Russia, and even got involved with both deceived parties in a trade war in China. To commit such stupidity,” Seligmann spoke quietly, but it seemed that his voice sounded like the roar of a mountain collapse, “it’s not enough to just be a fool. To do this you need to have strong support behind you. And you, Rothschild, know this as well as I do.

There was a heavy pause. Seligmann entered into an alliance with Bass and Kennedy and sided with Soviet Russia, if, of course, one could say so. This triumvirate opposed the Bush-Warburg-Rothschild alliance, which chose the Third Reich as its side. Both unions, of course, did not stop their cooperation with the “opposite” side, it’s just that “their” side had a little more interests and invested a little more money.

“I’ll tell you what, gentlemen,” Rockefeller, who had never taken either side, leaned forward. “Now is not the time to look for someone to blame.” It is much more important now to decide what to do in the current situation. The union of Soviet Russia and Japan has the character of almost a union, and such a unity creates unacceptable conditions for us: they are self-sufficient!

Warburg wanted to say something, but John stopped him with a conciliatory gesture:

- Wait, Warburg. Allow me, as the owner,” here Rockefeller allowed himself to smile slightly, “to finish. I know that each of us, to one degree or another, has already experienced a decrease in business activity in contacts with Russia and the Japanese. The islands are buying less and less raw materials, and this is not surprising: why would they buy something from us if the Russians are giving it to them for free? The Russians no longer need our cars and our equipment, and this is also understandable: unlike us, honest traders, Japan supplies them not with individual machines, but with entire factories.

And often together with the staff! But that wouldn’t be so bad: what’s much worse is that neither Russia nor Japan sells us anything anymore. Us! They are no longer interested in dollars! They pay each other without any money at all - a system of mutual settlements that always allows you to leave in the black the one you need at the moment. And on the foreign market they trade either with a solid backing of precious metals, or by barter, exchanging their products for the little that they still need. And you and I, gentlemen, are not in this scheme! Completely and absolutely!

Despite the increased role of the Internet, books do not lose popularity. Knigov.ru combines the achievements of the IT industry and the usual process of reading books. Now it’s much more convenient to get acquainted with the works of your favorite authors. We read online and without registration. A book can be easily found by title, author or keyword. You can read from any electronic device - just the weakest Internet connection is enough.

Why is reading books online convenient?

• You save money on buying printed books. Our online books are free.
• Our online books are convenient to read: the font size and display brightness can be adjusted on a computer, tablet or e-reader, and you can make bookmarks.
• To read an online book you do not need to download it. All you have to do is open the work and start reading.
• There are thousands of books in our online library - all of them can be read from one device. You no longer need to carry heavy volumes in your bag or look for a place for another bookshelf in the house.
• By choosing online books, you are helping to preserve the environment, as traditional books take a lot of paper and resources to produce.