What was planted on the football field in 1942. The most striking events in the history of the Moscow Dynamo stadium. Didn't have time to reforge

A History of the Catastrophic Failures of Military Intelligence John Hughes-Wilson

6. CONFUSED OPERATION. Dieppe (1942)

6. CONFUSED OPERATION. Dieppe (1942)

On August 19, 1942, forces from the 2nd Canadian Division, based in Sussex, England, landed at Dieppe, a small port city on the northern coast of France. The landing took place just after sunrise with 30 new heavy Churchill infantry support tanks. Five hours later, the defeated raid participants retreated, having suffered heavy losses: of the 5,000 people who were part of the landing force, 2,700 were killed, wounded or captured. With only 4,000 troops landing ashore, this meant a casualty rate of 60%, exceeding the then worst "record" achieved on the first day of the Battle of the Somme in 1916. The Germans were amazed at the stupidity and recklessness of their opponents. One German commentator wrote: "This adventure was contrary to all rules of military strategy and logic." The Dieppe operation was overgrown with numerous myths and secrets.

For a number of Canadian nationalists, Dieppe became one of the key myths, according to which brave Canadian soldiers were sent to certain death by cruel and incompetent British generals. In the eyes of the British public, this was a sacrificial political gesture to convince Stalin that the British Empire was indeed trying to take some of the pressure off the USSR by opening a second front; Conspiracy theorists regard Dieppe as nothing less than an insidious British plot to prove to American strategists in Washington, who in 1942 still knew nothing about European wars and demanded decisive action against the Nazis, that any premature offensive across the English Channel would inevitably end bloody defeat.

Each of these interpretations contains some truth - but none is exhaustive. For in one very important respect Dieppe is unique: it was the only major offensive operation undertaken by the Imperial military without the official sanction of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. This was the only major Allied operational decision of the entire Second World War that was not documented. This is precisely the secret that gave rise to all the myths about Dieppe.

A careful analysis of the evidence gives every reason to believe that the Dieppe operation was informal nature and was carried out without coordination with the relevant authorities. The assault on Dieppe was undertaken without adequate resources, lacked intelligence on many key aspects of the German defence, and, finally, it did not have the full support of the British command, which was often kept in the dark or simply ignored. Worse, the developers of the operation did not fundamentally warn the official intelligence agencies about the impending landing and did not request the necessary intelligence information from them. As a result, intelligence turned out to be the weakest point of the operation.

It may seem strange that a certain military leader would risk storming “Fortress Europe” occupied by the Wehrmacht without an official order, but the personality, ambitions, and track record of the man responsible for the Dieppe operation, Lord Mountbatten, were also strange. At the end of 1941, Captain Lord Mountbatten was transferred from his position as Commanding Officer of the Royal Navy and appointed Chief of Combined Operations, reporting to Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke, Chief of the General Staff. By March 1942, Mountbatten had been promoted to three titles, becoming the youngest vice-admiral in the history of the British navy.

Mountbatten had three main points of pride. He proved himself to be a brave destroyer captain - his last three ships were disabled under circumstances that, according to his many critics, showed only his recklessness and inexperience. Secondly, he was an expert in self-promotion, presenting himself as a young and daring hero capable of repelling the Germans and brightening up the bitterness of defeat for the British. Finally, Mountbatten had enormous connections. Cousin of the King, confidant of the Prime Minister, personal friend of Noel Coward, able to easily enlist the support of both Hollywood friends and representatives of the British establishment, Mountbatten was a bright spot in the gloomy wartime panorama of British life in early 1942. There was even talk among Conservative politicians (almost certainly initiated by Mountbatten himself) that he should be given powers that would elevate him above other General Staff officers.

Behind the carefully cultivated legend of Mountbatten was the unscrupulousness and ambition that often accompanies great men and their success. He was not above cheating during naval exercises to distinguish himself from other officers, and he deliberately withheld or falsified military documents after the war when he felt his carefully cultivated historical image was in danger. Even him official the biographer felt it necessary to mention that Mauntbatten was inclined to “rewrite history with an arrogant indifference to the facts.”

Mountbatten's vanity knew no bounds. At the height of the war, he could be seen posing for the camera on the set of Where We Serve, a hagiographic piece of propaganda based on his personal experience, where the swashbuckling destroyer captain was played by his close friend Noel Coward. Here is what Mountbatten wrote to Coward after the Dieppe raid: “Your letter caught me on my busiest day... but since the matter... is urgent, I will first resolve it, and then take up my official duties.” A normal commander in his place would have visited the wounded and dying and listened to the reports of the survivors.

Beaverbrook himself, knowing that Mountbatten would not tolerate any attack on his carefully cultivated reputation, warned during the war: “Do not trust Mountbatten with any position of responsibility.” Despite Beaverbrook's warning, the young, unprincipled, vain and ambitious aristocrat was given a seat on the nation's highest military council and the resources and power to attack the German-occupied coast of Europe. Mountbatten's character, combined with his newfound power and ambition, led to tragic consequences.

The Dieppe Raid of 1942 had a historical predecessor: the Zeebrugge Raid on St. George's Day in 1918. Under the command of Admiral Roger Keyes of the Dover Patrol, a sabotage group consisting of warships Marines and soldiers, stormed German submarine hangars on the Belgian coast in a desperate attempt to prevent the Kaiser's fleet from going to sea. The raid was partly successful and, despite heavy casualties, boosted British morale, which had been shaken by the last German ground offensive of the First World War. The Zeebrugge raid was touted as an example of a brilliant military operation that inflicted serious damage on the enemy at the cost of little bloodshed - precisely this type of indirect attack was for many years a favorite technique of British strategists.

In 1940, Keyes reappeared on the battlefield, this time as Chief of the Combined Operations Staff, tasked with attacking the victorious Germans on the shores of Europe and repeating his 1918 success. It is difficult to say what exactly prompted the British to attack defended positions on the European coast - the Germans never felt the need to undertake such a military adventure on the coast of Britain. Be that as it may, in 1940, the new Prime Minister Churchill decided that, despite the displacement of British troops from the continent, it was necessary to continue the offensive strategy - not only to inflict damage on the Germans, but also to encourage the suffering population of occupied Europe, whose in 1941 there was no other hope for liberation. Apart from aerial bombing, an offensive was the only chance.

The Joint Operations Headquarters was an unusual structure. It was an experimental headquarters for the coordination and planning of combat operations, created to combine the resources of the three branches of the armed forces. When Mountbatten succeeded Keyes in 1941, on the direct orders of Winston Churchill, his task, in Mountbatten's own words, was to "continue the raids so brilliantly begun by Bottom to maintain the offensive spirit... Secondly, to prepare for the invasion to Europe, without which we will never win this war.” Moreover, according to Mountbatten, Churchill said: "I want you to transform the south coast of England from a defensive bastion into a springboard for attack."

It was a meteoric rise for the recent 41-year-old ship's captain, whose pinnacle of dreams was to command one of the Royal Navy's new aircraft carriers. But Churchill, in his selection and appointment of the reckless Mountbatten to a high position, was guided primarily by political considerations: the Prime Minister wanted to demonstrate to the Americans, who had just entered the war and were skeptical about the combat potential of their ally, the offensive spirit of the British troops. After defeats in Norway, France, Dunkirk, Greece, Crete, Malaya and Singapore, after Rommel's victories in North Africa culminating in the surrender of Tobruk in June 1942, the Americans had every reason to have low regard for the combat effectiveness of the British army. Even Churchill could not understand why capitulation followed capitulation, often repeating bitterly: “Why don’t our soldiers want to fight?”

Churchill made a good choice. Aware of Mountbatten's charm, his attractive appearance, remembering the impression desperate fighter, the effect he had had on the Roosevelts, especially Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, the cunning prime minister knew that if anyone could convince senior American politicians of the strength of the British morale, it was Mountbatten. During his visits to Washington, the new Commander of Combined Operations won the hearts of all Americans he met, including the living embodiment of Republican military prowess and America's greatest soldier, General George W. Marshall, who became his personal friend. The young hero did a great job in the field of diplomatic “PR”, this time using his brilliant abilities not only for his own benefit, but also in the interests of his compatriots. Churchill was rightly proud of his protégé. Mountbatten himself seemed well aware of Churchill's true intentions, boasting to one of his friends: "Winston told me what he wanted, and now I must carry out his plans." With such strong support, it would be difficult for even the most modest person not to develop delusions of grandeur, and Mountbatten has never suffered from excessive modesty. According to Canadian historian and Dieppe specialist Professor Brian Loring Villa, “If Mountbatten’s head was turned, Churchill was most to blame.” If desired, one can even consider Mountbatten as victim the unscrupulous Churchill, who played on the weaknesses of the young admiral for his own purposes.

After Keyes's departure, Mountbatten wasted no time in establishing order at Joint Operations Headquarters and at the same time reaping the benefits of his predecessor's successes. The headquarters enjoyed the glory of successful raids on the Norwegian islands of Vågsøy and the first combat distinction Parachute Regiment - the daring theft of a German radar installation from the city of Bruneval in northern France. Even the raid on Saint-Nazaire on March 27, 1942, despite the losses, was considered successful (five people were awarded the Victoria Cross), since it destroyed a huge dry dock (the only one capable of serving German warships in the Atlantic), which decided one of the Great strategic problems for the British. All these operations were developed by the headquarters back when Keyes was in charge.

Mountbatten's Combined Operations Headquarters' new plans for 1942 included an extensive catalog of attacks, from the temporary capture of Alderney, one of the Channel Islands, to a reckless raid on Gestapo headquarters in Paris. The crowning number was to be the raid on Dieppe in June, codenamed “Lotsia” (Rutter). The goals of the Dieppe operation, despite later claims that it was a failed attempt at a large-scale invasion of Europe or some kind of deception aimed at disorienting the Germans and supporting the French Resistance fighters, were in fact the following: to test whether it was possible to capture and hold a major port in for a limited period of time; obtain intelligence from prisoners, as well as seize documents and equipment; assess the German reaction to a major "false" attack on the French coast.

In addition to these purely military goals, three other, less clearly defined, goals were set. First: the Air Force headquarters wanted to involve the Luftwaffe in the West in a large-scale air battle and inflict serious damage on the German air force based in France; the second, purely political goal: to demonstrate to the USSR that Britain was determined to take the Germans by the throat; third, the most nebulous of all: the desire of the Canadian government to take a more active part in the war.

The first of them subsequently played into the hands of Mount-Bethgen. Although the Royal Navy and Army were wary of committing too many forces to Operation Flight, the Chief of the Air Staff, Marshal Portal, was keen to demonstrate the power of the rapidly expanding fighter fleet in 1942 and to involve the German air force in the hope of inflicting a crushing defeat on the Germans. . Action to destroy ground targets in a port located close to the airfields of southern England was supposed to “cause a response from the Luftwaffe.” As a result, the RAF became staunch supporters of the plan, while the other two branches of the armed forces were rather lukewarm about it.

Churchill's political difficulties in the spring and summer of 1942 were largely due to his support for Operation Pilot in particular and the activities of Combined Operations Headquarters in general. Any British victory in the West would be an important trump card in a difficult political game between allies. The need for decisive action became even more obvious after Stalin's speech in February 1942, in which he dropped an indirect hint about the possibility of concluding a separate peace with Hitler. From the point of view of a seriously alarmed British Foreign Office, this speech could be either the first step towards concluding a truce, or an attempt to shift a significant part of the burden of the war onto the shoulders of the British in order to ease the burden of the Russians. In any case, it was necessary to convince the USSR that Great Britain was determined to fight. Large-scale offensive actions in the West would confirm this determination, regardless of their outcome.

The summer began under the sign of disappointing defeats in the desert and British dissatisfaction with the actions of their prime minister. Churchill became increasingly depressed and desperate for success - any success. With the fall of Tobruk on 21 June 1942, the political volcano in Westminster and Whitehall brought to the surface a lava of dissatisfaction with Churchill's wartime leadership: the Prime Minister and his government were fiercely criticized in political circles and in the press. A vote of no confidence was held in the House of Commons, and although its result (obviously orchestrated) was in favor of Churchill (475 votes to 25), the prime minister suffered a severe shock. He later admitted that "the only thing he ever feared was the House of Commons in the middle of a debate."

To survive as a politician, Churchill needed military success. And he knew it. Now he had to wage a political struggle not only with the Germans and his strategic allies Roosevelt and Stalin, but also with a skeptical parliament and Whitehall. Cautious and pragmatic chiefs of staff considered most of his military adventures premature, content with the gradual build-up of Britain's military power. Churchill the politician, who understood perfectly well that in a democracy it is necessary to please the crowd, needed some kind of immediate success. Only Bomber Command, under the pugnacious Harris, and Combined Operations Headquarters, led by the daring Lord Louis Mountbatten, shared his values ​​and were prepared to take on the enemy in the summer of 1942.

The third objective of Operation Location was the least practical of all. It consisted of the desire of the Canadian Expeditionary Forces, after two and a half years of inactivity, to take part in the battles. From the very beginning of the war, Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King publicly expressed strong support for Canada's entry into the war, but was in no hurry to send its troops to the front. Given the aggressiveness and traditionally high morale of the Canadians, such a policy was inevitably doomed to failure. Although thousands of Canadians signed up to volunteer, Mackenzie King understood that conscription for overseas service would lead to political problems, especially in French-speaking Canada, and ensured that Canadian involvement in front-line combat was kept to a minimum.

There was increasing disagreement among politicians in Ottawa. Having created a large, highly trained and equipped army and sent it to the English county of Sussex to prepare for battle, Canadian politicians found that their war machine started working on its own. The commanders of the Canadian Expeditionary Force in England, McNaughton, Crerar and Roberts, tired of two years of inactivity, were looking for an opportunity to take a more active part in the war, if only to give their bored soldiers something to do. As usual, boredom manifested itself in a decline in discipline. Canadians stole, got drunk, fought and had promiscuous sex, which is quite natural for any large group of healthy young people who find themselves far from home and not knowing what to do, but surrounded by many available single women.

The Canadian propaganda machine tried in vain to convince the public that the crime rate in the Canadian army was no higher than in others. By August 1942, 3,238 Canadian soldiers had been court-martialed in Sussex, and fed up with their antics, locals hoped that the fighting would soon turn the attention of their overly glib guests to other things. Lord Woof Woof mockingly broadcast from Berlin: “If you want to occupy Berlin, give every Canadian soldier a motorcycle and a bottle of whiskey. Then declare Berlin closed to visitors. Canadian soldiers will be there in 48 hours and the war will be over." In 1942, the Canadian army in Britain was the best trained, but the least likely to fight. The Canadians and their commanders were eager to fight. When Lieutenant General Harry Crerar, commander of the 1st Canadian Corps, was called to the headquarters of Montgomery, head of the south-eastern command, on April 27, 1942, he was asked whether Canadian soldiers were ready to take part in a large raid on the French coast. The answer was short: “Of course!”

On May 13, 1942, the chiefs of staff approved the plan for Operation Pilot. The plan called for a frontal attack along the entire coast of Dieppe, supported by flanking attacks by commandos with the aim of destroying the coastal batteries covering the approaches to the port. A thousand sorties were planned to take control of the airspace and ensure complete air superiority. The navy was supposed to bombard the city from the coastal zone. The “Lotsia” plan could not be called successful. In the final stages of planning, the attack force had to be significantly reduced, as the Navy refused to provide battleships and other large vessels for fire support, and the Air Force, in order to avoid casualties among French civilians, reduced plans for intensive bombing of the Dieppe coastline to a series of fighter-bomber raids and strafing attacks. The 2nd Canadian Division was to lead the attack and temporarily capture the radar station and airfield in the city of Arc, five kilometers from the coast.

On July 5 and 6, Canadian troops boarded landing craft, but the weather began to deteriorate and they were ordered to remain at anchor. While the soldiers were seasick in the cramped landing barges, two German bombers appeared in the skies over the Isle of Wight and bombed the flotilla - without significant results. The strong winds over the English Channel continued unabated, and on July 7 the operation was called off and the soldiers were put ashore, flooding the pubs and streets of southern England, where they spoke of the failed raid and the horrors they endured in cramped landing barges during the storm. Everyone believed that the Dieppe operation had failed and would now never take place.

It seemed true. Neither Montgomery's army commander nor Sir William James, commander of the navy at Portsmouth, believed in the feasibility of the plan. The further the development of Operation Location progressed, the greater their fears became. Montgomery, as Army commander, did not like the idea of ​​a frontal infantry attack without proper bombing by Air Force aircraft to weaken the enemy, and the head of Bomber Command was not prepared to carry out such an operation. Bernard Law Montgomery participated in the First World War and was well aware that a poorly prepared frontal attack without proper fire support was doomed to failure.

In turn, the commander of the Royal Navy in Portsmouth and the admiral at the head of the amphibious forces were well aware of the fate of the British Navy ships Prince of Wales and Ripalo, sunk six months ago in Malaya. They were not going to risk their battleships by allowing them to get within five miles of the enemy-occupied coast, where they could easily be bombed by the German Air Force. The First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Dudley Pound, completely agreed with them. Professional soldiers understood that the Dieppe raid was poorly thought out, not provided with adequate fire support and was not coordinated. Now that the operation had failed, they all breathed a sigh of relief.

What followed the cancellation of Operation Pilot marked the beginning of the Dieppe mystery. The cancellation of the long-cherished plan brought its developers into the public spotlight. Having taken the heat for both the overly bloated structure of the Combined Operations Headquarters and the shoddy planning of Operation Pilot, Mountbatten decided to act independently: on 8 and 11 July he held meetings of the main staffs involved in planning the initial operation and asked them for input. support in organizing a new raid. However, he was refused.

During the second meeting, on 11 July, Mountbatten quietly asked a few of his supporters to remain after the main critics of his plan (such as Rear Admiral Bailey-Grohmann, who had been appointed commander of the fleet forces in Operation Desert) had left the room. No one knows exactly what happened in the closed meeting that followed, but after it Mountbatten and his senior officer on his staff, Navy Captain John Hughes-Hallett, immediately began to develop a new operation to replace Pilot. It will be called "Jubilee", and its goal will again be Dieppe.

Any major operation that involved an attack on the European continent required the approval of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In July, one of the most curious episodes in the history of the Second World War occurred: the Chief of the Joint Operations Staff, protégé of the Prime Minister and media darling, Lord Louis Mountbatten, set out to deceive the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the apparatus that coordinated the actions of the intelligence services, commanders of the armed forces and most of the officers on their own staff. Mountbatten decided to launch a new attack on Dieppe under a different name and without official approval from his superiors. In his declining years in a little-known television interview Air Force 1972, he noted: “I have made an unusual and, I think, very bold decision - to once again try to storm Dieppe.”

Even Captain Hughes-Hallett, the officer closest to Mountbatten and a staunch supporter of his plan for a new attack on Dieppe, was worried about the lack of approval from above. He emphasized that, as a senior officer on the Joint Operations Headquarters, it would be necessary for him to refer to the instructions of some official authority in all staff documents and written requests. In this regard, on July 17, the Chief of the Joint Operations Staff sent a formal request to the Joint Chiefs of Staff for the adoption of the following resolution: “The Chief of the Joint Operations Staff is tasked with organizing a new urgent operation to replace the “Lotsia” ... using the same troops.” The chiefs of staff had doubts, and the resolution was not included in the minutes of the meeting.

Mountbatten grew increasingly impatient. On July 25 and 26, he sent new requests to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, this time asking for unlimited authority to conduct large-scale raids without having to specify the targets of the offensives each time. Jealous of Mount Batten's rapid rise and privileged access to the top, the chiefs of staff, extremely suspicious of his ambitions and motives, did not meet him halfway. On July 27, they passed a resolution that slightly expanded his planning powers, but also emphasized the need for official permission to organize any new operation.

Mountbatten did not expect anything more. He was glad to have the opportunity to do something and gave orders to Captain Hughes-Hallett and several trusted officers of his staff to get to work immediately. It is not known what he told Hughes-Hallett, but there is little doubt that he deceived him. He may have made it seem that the July 27 resolution, which expanded his planning powers, actually implied the Joint Chiefs of Staff's agreement to develop a new plan called "Jubilee." Hughes-Hallett was his staunch ally and sincerely believed everything his charismatic boss, who interacted closely with prime ministers, film stars and chiefs of staff, said. For a senior staff officer, such an attitude towards his superior was quite natural.

On July 28, for the information of a limited number of officers of the Joint Operations Headquarters, an order was issued to resume Operation Pilot under the direction of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and under the code name "Jubilee". On July 31, the headquarters of the sabotage forces received new operational orders, and all parties involved urgently began planning a repeat operation. On August 12, the Committee of Chiefs of Staff gave its consent to planning a new raid instead of the canceled “Lotsia”. Dieppe was not mentioned or discussed as a target for the operation.

To the end of his days, Mountbatten relied on these broadly worded decisions to create the impression that his second raid on Dieppe had been officially approved. However, neither the testimony of his colleagues on the Joint Chiefs of Staff nor the cabinet documents say a word in favor of this version. Even Churchill could not remember the decisions regarding the Dieppe raid when he was working on his own work on the history of the war, Loop of Fate, in 1950. In the end, seeing no other choice, he accepted Mountbatten's interpretation and took responsibility himself, but we know from his correspondence that Churchill did so solely because neither he nor anyone else could find any government documents , which would indicate the opposite.

The truth is that there was simply no specific approval for a new attack on Dieppe, and Mountbatten knew this very well. He resolved the troop problem by advising Canadian military leaders to keep details of the new operation secret "in the interests of security." A limited number of staff officers began planning Operation Jubilee in the utmost secrecy. But not everyone was informed. Under the guise of “security” (that invaluable mantra of the military trying to hide an unpleasant truth), several key departments were deliberately kept in the dark. The intractable Fleet Admiral Bailey-Grohmann was not included among the initiates, and at Mountbatten's request Captain Hughes-Hallett took over his duties. Bypassing Montgomery's headquarters, Mauntbatten secretly maintained contact directly with the senior commanders of the Canadian army. Most dangerous of all, neither Mountbatten's own chief of staff, nor his senior intelligence liaison officer, nor his official deputy, Major General Haydon, were informed of the new plan for the Dieppe raid. In commercial terms, this would be equivalent to the chairman of the UK branch of a company Ford decided to produce new model vehicle in the UK and would not have informed the company's US headquarters, the company's sales and marketing director or its finance director. One can only guess how Mountbatten was going to get out of this situation. Most likely, he was betting on the success of the raid, knowing that “winners are not judged.”

The real danger to the renewed operation lay in the area of ​​intelligence. Although measures for the logistical support of any upcoming military operation cannot be kept secret for long, it is not always possible to determine from them location operations. When it comes to information support, the secret inevitably comes out: Mountbeth needed maps, plans, photographs and other information about Dieppe. There were two dangers to Mountbatten's secret plans: he had to keep his revised operational plan secret not only from the Germans, but also, if possible, from the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The task seemed almost impossible, but Mountbatten desperately needed intelligence—lots of intelligence—to mount a successful attack on a heavily guarded port in occupied Europe.

The British have demonstrated skill in directing and coordinating intelligence operations for many years. top level. Learning from their mistakes and experience, by the end of 1941 they had perfected the fundamental principle: everyone operations notify the Interdepartmental Security Council (Inter-Services Security Board - ISSB). The purpose of this bureaucratic measure was simple, but extremely important: ISSB was the coordination center of activities to mislead the enemy and, in particular, coordinated the activities LCS- the British secret service, whose activities are described in Chapter 2. In addition, ISSB ensured the safety of operations: only in it did they know which of the secrets leaked to the Germans during various counterintelligence and diversionary operations were genuine and which were false, only in it could they assess the overall degree of risk that threatened the security of a particular operation.

Mountbatten chose not to inform the Inter-Services Security Council about Operation Jubilee. The official work “British Intelligence during the Second World War” does not say a word on this subject. Moreover, Mountbatten did not seek help from any of the leading intelligence organizations such as the Secret Intelligence Service (SJS), relying on the intelligence collected for Operation Desert. He updated this basic information through a series of low-level reconnaissance missions assigned to tactical aerial photographic reconnaissance units and special small communications units that could be approached directly without having to answer awkward questions.

Such neglect of intelligence was fraught with serious dangers. First, Mountbatten risked being left without the latest intelligence once his troops landed. Secondly, he was deprived of the opportunity to know how much the Germans knew about his plans. Dieppe was by then seriously discredited as a target. Six thousand soldiers had been talking about the canceled July 7 Sailing raid across southern England since the day they disembarked from the landing craft. Who could stop them from doing this? For them it was already history. Everything that was connected with the raid on Dieppe has long ceased to be a secret. And to top all the troubles LCS(about whom Mountbatten knew almost nothing) was busy passing on carefully selected nuggets of information about old raid on Dieppe to his “colleagues” from the German intelligence services. With the abolition of “Lotsia”, it was possible to safely supply the enemy with more or less valuable information about this operation in order to increase his confidence in the agents MI5, embedded in the Abwehr.

An operation to deceive German intelligence carried out by the British Double Cross Committee using converted agents MI5, in the summer of 1942 it bore fruit. The German intelligence service received at least four warnings about the Dieppe raid from its ostensible agents in Britain. Thus, the Germans were excellently informed. To such an extent that some commentators quite seriously believed that the second Dieppe operation was a deceptive maneuver undertaken at the cost of great blood for the sole purpose of strengthening the reputation of the agents MI5 in the Abwehr. This version is clearly far-fetched. The most likely explanation is that the Interdepartmental Security Council gave permission for the transfer of minor secrets to the Abwehr after the cancellation of "Lotsia". The only problem was that the secrets were not insignificant: Dieppe was indeed about to be attacked, but Mountbatten had decided not to inform the Inter-Services Security Council that the operation had resumed. Mountbatgen's troops were at great risk.

As often happens in war, everything was decided by chance - the German intelligence service in Paris did not convey its warnings to the troops defending Dieppe. Although a drill was sounded on the French coast on 17 and 18 August 1942, and Hitler and the commander of German forces in the West, von Rundstedt, warned of possible raids on the French coast, there is no evidence that any of this was related to a specific attack in the area Dieppe. There is no evidence that the Germans received reinforcements and prepared an ambush for the Canadians. But neither Mountbatgen's intelligence nor the Canadian intelligence could know this. Mountbatten was lucky.

The reconnaissance missions in preparation for Operation Jubilee were relatively simple. To attack a defended coast, operational headquarters must have four types of information: the topography of the battlefield (steepness of the coastline, direction of currents, etc.); data on the number and deployment of enemy troops; data on weapons, their location and potential; and finally, information about the enemy’s response plans - to fight, wait for reinforcements or retreat.

In theory, this all seems easy, but obtaining such information requires access to the entire “pantheon” of intelligence sources and agencies. For example, information about the coastline can be found in books published before the war, but since time and tides inevitably make their own adjustments, it is important that reconnaissance divers carefully recheck the topography of the coast as close to the start of the raid as possible. Information about enemy numbers, dispositions, and morale can be pieced together through aerial photographic reconnaissance, agent reports, signals intelligence, and publicly available sources. It is more difficult to collect information about enemy guns and ammunition depots: after identifying their location using aerial photographic reconnaissance, information from local agents or prisoners of war or electronic intelligence data is required to concretize the resulting images. Finally, the enemy's plans and intentions can only be learned from agent messages, captured documents and electronic intelligence data.

The fact is that to carry out a successful operation of such a scale as the Dieppe Raid, the entire huge arsenal of information collection tools at the disposal of British intelligence was needed. He was available and could answer any questions, but if Mountbatten had turned to the Joint Intelligence Committee for full information support for the raid Joint Intelligence Committee - JIC) Great Britain, he would certainly have warned the Cabinet Office and the Joint Chiefs of Staff of his intention to resume the raid, and they would have stopped it. Therefore, in deciding to bypass the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mountbatten was forced to bypass the intelligence agencies.

By ignoring the intelligence community, Mountbatten risked leaving his troops in the dark about vital information. His failure to take advantage of all available sources of intelligence resulted in needless losses. Here are two simple but convincing examples: the coast at Dieppe turned out to be too steep and rocky for tanks with lightweight tracks; secondly, artillery pieces were hidden in coastal grottoes. On the day of the operation, ignorance of these two facts would have killed many Canadians. Both problems could easily have been solved by the Joint Intelligence Committee using the intelligence at its disposal, but Mountbatten did not dare seek help from an outside higher authority. He wanted to keep his desire for personal glory secret.

Some other intelligence errors at Dieppe bordered on the farcical. According to information obtained by the intelligence department of the Joint Operations Headquarters - and military intelligence - the Dieppe area was defended by the 110th Wehrmacht Division. Of course, the soldiers of the 110th division would have been glad to be there, but it was impossible: in those days they wearily wandered across Russia almost four thousand kilometers from the scene of events, pursuing Soviet soldiers retreating to the east in the endless steppe.

In fact, the military unit enjoying the good wine and French girls in Dieppe was the 571st Infantry Regiment of the 302nd Division, a second-class division composed mostly of middle-aged Poles and ethnic Germans and equipped with a motley mixture of horses, motorcycles, captured Czech and French weapons and other ammunition, which the quartermaster service at the headquarters of the western group of German forces in Paris was able to beg from Berlin. Lacking weapons, ammunition, and trained manpower, the commander of the 302nd Division wisely decided to concentrate his resources on covering the enemy's most likely attack site: the rocky coastline at Dieppe. Equally prudent was his order not to place guns in pre-prepared firing positions where they could be spotted and attacked from the air. While combing the coast during tactical reconnaissance flights on behalf of the Joint Operations Headquarters, the pilots could not, even if they wanted to, look inside the grottoes in the coastal cliffs of Dieppe. The wisdom of Major General Konrad Haase's simple but effective defensive plan became apparent to the defenders the minute flanking fire from assorted guns hidden in grottoes and a captured French tank built into the dam began mowing down the Canadians as they climbed the steep, rocky slope.

Since Mountbatten neglected the services SIS and networks of Special Operations Executive agents (Special Operations Executive - SOE) in France, his headquarters decided to use the services of electronic intelligence - if not at the strategic level (in this case it would have to deal with the Joint Intelligence Committee), then at least at the tactical level. This measure was supported by the experience gained during the spring raid on Saint-Nazaire. If the operational group of the headquarters could hear how the enemy reacts and what orders it receives directly during the battle, the military commanders of the Joint Operations Headquarters could act “with their eyes open.” This clever tactic worked much better during the raid on Saint-Nazaire than anyone at Cheadle (the headquarters of the radio intercept service) could have predicted. Ironically, during the Dieppe operation the airwaves were filled with information, and the radio interception service of the Joint Operations Headquarters simply could not cope with the timely transmission of data to the air commander during the battle. However, the idea itself was reasonable.

As the day of the attack approached, concerns grew about the success of Operation Jubilee and its secrecy. Secrecy was a major concern; After the cancellation of the first attack, this may have seemed pointless, but several incidents of information leaks and loss of documents reinforced the need to keep preparations for the operation secret - at least from the Joint Intelligence Committee. Even enthusiastic Canadians had their doubts. The commander of the infantry division, Major General Roberts, was alarmed by the whole plan, but the cheerful assurances of Mountbatten and the staff of the Joint Operations Headquarters somewhat reassured him. After all, he reasoned, these are experienced staff officers, no match for me. His concerns, however, were shared by many Canadians.

Captain Austin Stanton, adjutant of the Calgary Tank Regiment, admitted: “In my opinion, the operation had no chance.” He was so pessimistic that on the day of the operation he dressed in everything new in case he was captured, which greatly angered his commander. Be that as it may, on the night of August 18, the Calgary Tank Regiment boarded the new 60-meter tank landing ship (TLD) at Newhaven in full view of a silent crowd of civilians. “As we stood in line at the docks,” Stanton recalled, “there was an eerie silence.” With 4,963 other Operation Jubilee participants boarding 237 ships, the anxious adjutant of the Canadian Tank Regiment sailed towards the battle.

The attack did not go well from the very beginning. The German Navy carried out regular patrols to monitor commercial maritime traffic along the French coastline. This fact, including the schedule of patrol convoys, was well known at Dover and Portsmouth, where coastal surface target detection radars were located. However, more precise information about the convoys was kept secret at the request of senior management, since it came from confidential strategic sources such as the Enigma message decipherment group. No one from Mountbatgen's intelligence staff asked for details about German movements in the English Channel on 18 and 19 August. To make such a request would be to inform the Joint Intelligence Committee and, along with it, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, of the operation.

The result was predictable. Early on the morning of 19 August, as the ships carrying the 3rd Commando Battalion approached the cliffs at Belleville and Berneval east of Dieppe, their escort encountered a German coastal convoy in the dark. Despite two clear signals sent at 01.27 and 02.44 by Royal Navy radar from England to the commander of the troops on board the destroyer Culp with the exact coordinates of the German convoy, the warning did not reach the escort on the eastern flank. The Joint Operations Headquarters plan began to fail from the very first steps.

The participants in Operation Jubilee only learned of the German convoy when a flare flashed overhead and, in its cold, uncertain light, the German escort opened fire, knocking out gunboat No. 5, which provided direct cover for the landing craft on the eastern flank. As other Royal Navy escort vessels approached, a fierce exchange of fire began with tracer rounds flying in all directions "like fireworks". As a result, the Germans were forced to retreat with heavy losses. Operation Jubilee lost the element of surprise. At dawn, the ships of the eastern flank, with the paratroopers on board who had not yet recovered from the surprise, approached the shore in alarming silence. According to one sergeant of the 3rd Commando Battalion, "You could see the damned Germans through their binoculars as we landed on the beach."

With the first rays of the sun several attacks began at once. To the east, on the left flank, the 3rd Commando Battalion, under the command of the formidable Peter Young (who had watched the night's firefight from its very epicenter), overcame barriers from barbed wire, “with which the Hans carefully entangled the entire cliff - probably to make it easier for us to climb,” and carried out a successful attack that silenced the Goebbels artillery battery. By noon, Young returned to New Haven with his field uniform torn to shreds and his hands bloody. On the extreme western flank at Varenge-ville, Lord Lovat's disciplined 4th Commando Battalion destroyed the Hess Battery guns in an exemplary double envelopment maneuver.

author Isaev Alexey Valerievich

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Over its 85 years, the Dynamo stadium has played a big role in the history of Russian football, and indeed the entire country. It was built in 1928 according to the design of architects Alexander Langman and Leonid Cherikover for the All-Union Spartakiad. In just a couple of years, the Dynamo stadium grew up in one of the most beautiful corners of old Moscow.

At first, it had the shape of a horseshoe half a kilometer long - a structure unprecedented in scale for that time. The stadium could accommodate about 40 thousand spectators; before its appearance, the players of the Moscow Dynamo club could not even dream of this. The stadium opened on August 17, 1928. On the same day, the first football match between the national teams of Belarus and workers' clubs of Switzerland took place here.

Attempts to hold matches under electric lighting have been made since 1933. And in 1940, high towers with floodlights were finally installed in the corners of the stadium. The first match under the lights took place at the Dynamo stadium on November 8, 1940. The hosts of the snow-covered field hosted Dynamo from Riga. The Muscovites beat the guests with the second team with a score of 4:2. But the first final of the USSR Cup under electric lighting was held at the Dynamo stadium only on October 10, 1953.

Over time, the stadium required modernization. Reconstruction lasted from the autumn of 1934 to the beginning of 1936. “Dynamo” has become even more spacious and comfortable, the horseshoe has turned into an oval. And in 1938, a small stadium for 10 thousand spectators was also built here. Sports complex grew and developed, but then the war began. On June 19, 1941, the last peaceful match took place at the stadium; within the framework of the USSR Dynamo Championship, Moscow hosted Traktor Stalingrad. The game ended in a draw with a score of 1:1. 30 thousand spectators watched the game.

1941 - 1944, military training camp

During the war, the stadium is carefully camouflaged; there are no athletes here anymore. Except that snipers and shooters were practicing at the shooting range. At Dynamo, special detachments of the famous separate motorized rifle brigade for special purposes or OMSBON are formed.

For camouflage during the war, spruce trees were planted on Dynamo.

First after long break the match took place at the stadium on July 18, 1944. As part of the capital championship, Dynamo won against Torpedo with a score of 3 - 2. Until 1956, when the Luzhniki Stadium was built, Dynamo remained the main arena of the country.

On that day, for the first time in the USSR, a live television broadcast of a football match was organized. On June 29, 1949, the first match in the USSR was held at the Dynamo stadium, which spectators could watch at home. The entire meeting was broadcast live. At the Dynamo stadium, CDKA defeated Dynamo Minsk with a score of 4:1. The match was commentated by radio announcer Vadim Sinyavsky. And after that, live broadcasting and the general presence of television became the norm at all major events.

Dynamo Stadium. 1949

1980 XXII Olympic Games

From 1977 to 1979, Dynamo was again reconstructed. The stadium is being prepared for the 1980 Moscow Olympics. The large stadium hosts football matches, and the small arena hosts matches of the Olympic field hockey tournament. The team of the country of the Soviets welcomes football players from Cuba and Kuwait to Dynamo.

Here Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia meet in the semi-finals. In total, the stadium hosted 7 Olympic tournament meetings. And on August 1, 1980, with 45 thousand spectators, the USSR national team beat Yugoslavia in the match for third place with a score of 2:0. Czechoslovakia won Olympic gold, and the GDR team won silver.

Dynamo Stadium after reconstruction for the 1980 Olympics.

After the Olympics, the stadium began to be used as a concert venue. The legendary band Deep Purple performed for the first time in Russia at a festival organized by the Europe Plus radio station. On June 23, 1996, at the Dynamo stadium, at a rock concert they also sang Status Quo, “Nautilus - Pompilius”, “The Untouchables”, “Moral Code”. Deep Purple lit up the audience for 1.5 hours; 20 thousand fans came to see them. By the way, the festival was originally planned for the 22nd, but Yeltsin issued a decree to postpone the concert, since this was the day the war began.

It was here, at Dynamo, that Michael Jackson performed in 1996, during his second visit to Russia as part of the HIStory world tour. It was a huge event. The stadium, designed for 54 thousand seats, gathered 71 thousand fans of the King of Pop. The concert was postponed for three hours because the stage was not prepared in time. The famous trainer Edgar Zapashny, who attended Jackson’s performance with his brother, said that people fainted while waiting for the star to appear. The crowd was so dense. The show started with a grand fireworks display.

In 2008, the stadium celebrated its 80th anniversary. A year later, in 2009, large-scale reconstruction will begin here. And on November 22, 2008, Dynamo hosted farewell match, the Moscow team hosts Tom. A full stadium and farewell to their home arena are two great reasons to win, which is what Dynamo is doing. The score is 2:0.

2016...

Z The reconstruction of the stadium is planned to be completed by 2016. All that will remain of the old Dynamo is the wall facing Leningradka. The new football arena will meet all UEFA requirements.

This is what Dynamo stadium will look like after reconstruction.

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In the summer of 1941, the Wehrmacht General Staff was so confident of an imminent victory that it did not pay special attention into a forested and swampy area with rare dirt roads between the Army Groups “Center” and “North”, heading towards Moscow and Leningrad, respectively. After the capture of the Belarusian capital and the defeat of the main forces of the Western Military District in the Bialystok and Minsk “cauldrons” (341 thousand irretrievable losses of the Red Army in two weeks), German motorized corps began advancing towards the Dnieper and Western Dvina. Chief of the German General Staff, Colonel General Franz Halder wrote in his diary: “In general, we can already say that the task of defeating the main forces of the Russian ground army... has been completed... Therefore, it would not be an exaggeration to say that the campaign against Russia was won within 14 days. Of course, it's not finished yet. The enormous extent of the territory and the stubborn resistance of the enemy, using all means, will fetter our forces for many more weeks.”

After the Battle of Moscow was lost in December 1941, a certain sobering set in Berlin, but “dizziness” began from the first major success in the Kremlin and at the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command (VGK). A decision was made, not supported by material resources, to launch a counter-offensive along the entire front with the help of powerful groups of shock armies, including to unblock Leningrad, create a “cauldron” for Army Group Center, and liberate Kharkov and Crimea. The strategic offensive plan of the Red Army was discussed at the beginning of January 1942 at the Supreme Command Headquarters. The essence of the plan was outlined by Joseph Stalin: “The Germans want... to gain time and get a break. Our task is to not give the Germans this respite, to drive them west without stopping, to force them to use up their reserves before the spring, when we will have large new reserves, and the Germans will have no more reserves, and thus ensure , complete defeat of Hitler's troops in 1942 " This decision was not only supported by all front commanders, but they took on increased obligations, including the defeat of the Wehrmacht group “Center”. After the failures of the first year of the war with retreats and “cauldrons,” everyone rushed to the offensive without a critical analysis of the real situation and underestimating the power of the enemy.

To carry out the strategic plan, a special role was assigned to the newly formed shock armies. Operational military formations (shock armies) As a rule, they were in the reserve of the GVK Headquarters and were intended to defeat enemy groups in the main directions. At the beginning of the war, they included tank, mechanized and cavalry corps. They had to be better equipped than conventional armies with tanks, guns and mortars. By the beginning of 1942, five shock armies had been created. Unfortunately, their material support was not always satisfactory. There was a huge shortage of artillery shells. There was not enough aviation to cover the rifle divisions. Due to the lack of rockets to reinforce the shock armies, guards rocket and mortar regiments with the most formidable secret weapon of the famous Katyushas were not allocated from the SVK Reserve.
Only in the subsequent years of the war were the shock armies fully equipped and played an important role in the victory over the Third Reich. The soldiers of the Third Shock Army hoisted the Victory Banner in 1945. Commanding General Colonel, Hero Soviet Union Vasily Kuznetsov previously commanded the First Shock Army, which distinguished itself in the counteroffensive near Moscow and the Demyansk offensive operation of February 1942.

The Fifth Shock Army, led by Colonel General Hero of the Soviet Union Nikolai Berzin, also stormed Berlin, and the commander became the first commandant of the defeated capital of the Third Reich.

In the winter campaign of 1942, the offensive of Soviet troops on the Volkhov Front was integral part Strategic plan of Headquarters for the release of Leningrad. But the breakthrough of the German front by the Second Shock Army turned into a tragedy. During three months of fighting (January - March 1942), the army changed three commanders. Having broken through the front in a small area near Myasny Bor, the army found itself surrounded without reserves, shells and food in conditions of a spring crossroads and impassability. On June 27, 1942, the front command made the last breakthrough attempt, which ended unsuccessfully, and by the end of July the Second Shock Army ceased to exist. According to various estimates, from 13 to 16 thousand soldiers escaped from the encirclement, mainly at Myasny Bor (“Valley of Death”), the rest were captured (about 27 - 30 thousand people). In total, over 146 thousand Soviet soldiers and officers died during the operation. The commander of the shock army, Lieutenant General Vlasov, who received the army in a hopeless state, surrendered.

Two months earlier in April 1942, on the southern flank of the Wehrmacht group “Center”, when leaving the encirclement of the 33rd Army, commander General Mikhail Efremov (Hero) shot himself (along with his wife) Russian Federation, posthumously, 1996). The Germans, paying tribute to the general's courage, buried him with military honors.

The Supreme High Command Headquarters, operating in the north-western direction, ordered the troops of the Third and Fourth Shock Armies of the Kalinin Front to break through the front in the Velikiye Luki area and further develop an offensive towards Vitebsk and Orsha in order to bypass Smolensk from the west and create a “cauldron” for the Wehrmacht group “Center”. But due to the threat of encirclement, the assigned tasks were not completed.

The Soviet operation to defeat Army Group Center ended in defeat. War stories place the blame for this on the commander of the Western Front, Army General Georgy Zhukov.

Rzhev-Vyazemsk offensive operation (January 8 - April 20, 1942) on the Soviet operational map
The winter campaign of 1942 ended in tragedy for the Red Army, whose losses in the first quarter amounted to 1.8 million (!) people. On the Volkhov Front, the Second Shock Army found itself in a cauldron, the Rzhev-Vyazemsk operation of the Kalinin and Western Fronts ended in failure (Red Army losses - 776 thousand, including 272 thousand irrevocable), the troops of the Crimean Front were almost completely destroyed near Kerch by the rapid counter-offensive of the Wehrmacht . The troops of the Southwestern Front, advancing on Kharkov, were surrounded. The initiative passed to the Wehrmacht, which developed a plan for a strategic summer offensive in the southern direction. “Comrade Molotov had to urgently pack his suitcase, board a strategic bomber and fly to pay his respects to his capitalist uncles...”.

Against the background of the unsuccessful campaign of the Red Army, the Fourth Shock Army, led by Colonel General Andrei Eremenko (future Hero of the Soviet Union and Marshal), distinguished itself. She took part in the counter-offensive near Moscow, and in the winter campaign of 1942 as part of the Kalinin Front. The army has reached best result- broke through the defensive lines of the Wehrmacht and in a month of fighting went deeper by 250 km, liberating the cities of Andreopol and Toropets, and after the capture of Velizh (in the north of the Smolensk region) it reached... the border of the Belarusian SSR.

249th Rifle Division, staffed mainly by border guard soldiers (divisional commander, Major General German Tarasov

I didn’t have the strength to leave the field... Memories of the legendary match that took place in besieged Leningrad on May 31, 1942

BLOCKAGE MATCH.

On May 31, St. Petersburg celebrates the 70th anniversary of an incredible event that has gone down in history forever. According to the official version, on May 31, 1942, at the height of the blockade, a football match was held in Leningrad in which the local Dynamo players met with the team of the Leningrad Metal Plant.

Text Igor Borunov

Almost everyone in St. Petersburg knows this story in one form or another. Having survived the most terrible winter of 1941–1942, besieged Leningrad was just beginning to come to its senses. The Road of Life started working, and up to 200 wagons with food began to arrive in the city every day... It was very important to maintain the faith of Leningraders that everything would end well. And someone up there came up with an idea: besieged city must play football against all odds. And they played - at the Dynamo stadium on Krestovsky Island.

There are still ongoing debates about which match should be considered the first blockade match. The versions are different. It is widely believed that the real blockade match took place on May 6. The players of the Leningrad Dynamo, they say, met with the team of the Baltic Fleet Crew and won with a score of 7:3. Perhaps this was the case, especially since the direct participants in the events, in particular the goalkeeper and later commentator Viktor Nabutov, insisted on this. But there is much more evidence to consider the first official match to be the game on May 31 between Dynamo and the team representing the Leningrad Metal Plant named after Stalin (LMZ), which included football players from the Leningrad clubs Zenit and Spartak, as well as several workers. For wartime reasons, the name of the rival team of the blue and whites sounded like “team of the N-factory.”

The meeting ended with a convincing victory for Dynamo, who were better prepared for it - 6:0, but a week later in the replay, the N-sky plant almost took revenge, achieving a draw - 2:2. After these matches, sporting events in the besieged city became almost regular.

WHO PLAYED

“Dynamo” – “N-sky Zavod” – 6:0

"Dynamo": Victor Nabutov, Mikhail Atyushin, Valentin Fedorov, Arkady Alov, Konstantin Sazonov, Victor Ivanov, Boris Oreshkin, Evgeny Ulitin, Alexander Fedorov, Anatoly Viktorov, Georgy Moskovtsev.

"N-sky plant": Ivan Kurenkov, Alexander Fesenko, Georgy Medvedev, Anatoly Mishuk, Alexander Zyablikov, Alexey Lebedev, Nikolay Gorelkin, Nikolay Smirnov, Ivan Smirnov, Pyotr Gorbachev, V. Losev.

Judge Pavel Pavlov.

Honored Coach of the USSR German Semenovich Zonin came to Leningrad from Kazan in 1949. On the Volga, he attended matches with the participation of Dynamo and Zenit football players evacuated from Leningrad.

– The Dynamo team was the calling card of the city. Everyone knew and loved them. They were good guys. Friendly team. Her soul was Valentin Fedorov, who played for Dynamo along with his brother Dmitry. Almost the entire Zenit team was evacuated, and only a few of the Dynamo players left for Kazan. They worked at a factory there and played football on Saturdays. There were a lot of people at the matches! They showed great football. I will never forget how Peka Dementyev (at that time a Zenit football player - Ed.) at the request of the public began to make his feints. It was simply impossible to take the ball away from him without fouling,” recalls Zonin.

Zonin met the participants in the blockade matches already in Leningrad, when he began playing for Dynamo.

– We met with goalkeeper Viktor Nabutov at the Dynamo stadium. Nabutov returned after illness, and I trained him every day. Was with Arkady Alov good relations, but when I arrived, he was no longer playing at Dynamo, but at Zenit. I played at Dynamo with Anatoly Viktorov. Then he left - Vsevolod Bobrov took him in, and Viktorov became the champion of the Soviet Union in hockey three times as part of the Air Force. I remember Kostya Sazonov - a handsome guy! Played as a winger. Before matches, he always made a circle around the square in his car. The girls were running after him! And then he returned to the stadium,” says Zonin.

I ask German Semenovich to tell us about the background of the blockade match.

– The war found Dynamo in Tbilisi. They returned to Leningrad and, as one, enlisted in the Red Army. Since they represented the Dynamo society, many worked in the police and the NKVD - they neutralized spies who showed the Germans where to bomb. There was such a young player - Fedor Sychev, a central defender. In the fall of 1941, he was on duty. The bombing began. Seeing an elderly woman who was crossing the road, Fyodor decided to help her go to the shelter. At the moment the shell exploded, he covered her with his body. She remained alive, but he died,” sighs the veteran of domestic football.

In addition to Sychev, the harsh wartime did not spare several other players from that team. Nikolaev, Shapkovsky and Kuzminsky died under different circumstances.

– Valentin Fedorov was a good organizer. He and Alov were entrusted with collecting the players. They called me to the city party committee. Why did you call? Goebbels's propaganda rang out to the whole world that Lenin's city is a city of the dead, the inhabitants are already beginning to engage in cannibalism. Then the city committee decided to hold a football match. Fedorov and Alov were given the task of gathering the football players. The other team was assembled by trade unions. Of course, people were thin and hungry, but they came out to play,” continues Zonin.

“CONSIDER THE GAME AS A COMBAT MISSION”

Unfortunately, none of the direct participants in those events have survived to this day. The last one, Dynamo forward Evgeniy Ulitin, passed away in 2002. It is he who is captured in the only surviving reliable photograph of the blockade match, taken by TASS photojournalist Vasyutinsky. Let us turn to the siege memories of the game organizers, published in newspapers in the 1970s and 1980s.

Valentin FEDOROV, Dynamo midfielder:

– One day, Arkady Alov and I were summoned to the military department of the city party committee. The manager asked which of the football players remained in the city, whose addresses or places of service we know. Seeing our bewilderment, he explained: “The military council of the front decided to hold a football match in the blockaded city and is giving this game great importance. Consider it your most important combat mission." The task was difficult. The Dynamo team actually did not exist then. Six football players were in Kazan, four died, one was seriously injured and evacuated. But the recruitment turned out to be not the most difficult. How to play when you don’t even have enough strength to walk? However, the players gradually gathered, and we began training. We trained twice a week.

Alexander ZYABLIKOV, midfielder and captain of the N-factory team:

– There were quite a few of us, the players of the pre-war Zenit, left in the city in the spring of 1942. Almost everyone worked in the workshops of the Metal Plant. For example, I was the deputy head of the air defense department. Naturally, we didn’t even think about any football. At the beginning of May, I completely accidentally ran into Dynamo player Dmitry Fedorov on the street and, quite unexpectedly, immediately received an offer from him to play with Dynamo. We had more problems with recruitment. We had to gather players from Spartak and other city teams. Some of those included in the squad never took to the field - they were so weak from hunger. Our opponents gave us the uniform. Dynamo, who managed to practice a little, proposed playing two halves of 45 minutes each. The factory workers agreed only to two for 20. “Let’s start with half an hour,” I said, approaching Judge Pavlov. “If we hold out, then it will be all 45 minutes.” We didn’t have a goalkeeper, so defender Ivan Kurenkov stood in at the goal, but we were still missing one more player. Then Dynamo lost their player Ivan Smirnov to us. And yet we survived two halves, because we understood: the city should know that we played.

Before the rematch on June 7, the N-factory team looked for a goalkeeper, Kurenkov took his usual place in defense, and the factory workers almost achieved victory.

The son of Dynamo goalkeeper Viktor Nabutov, commentator, journalist and producer Kirill Nabutov, admitted that his father did not like to talk about the blockade match. But he told the impressions of another Blue and White player - Mikhail Atyushin, an detective officer of the Leningrad police, who before the war played football only at the amateur level.

“I spoke with Mikhail Atyushin, a football player and gymnast who took part in the match and whose name is also on the memorial plaque,” ​​says Nabutov. – One day in May he went to the Dynamo stadium to do gymnastics. I didn’t train in the winter months - the blockade, hunger. I came and met the football players. They tell him: “Oh! It's good that we got you! Let's go play." They played, but he didn’t really remember the details.

“DO NOT KICK OUT – THERE ARE POTATOES”

Beloved by many Leningraders, the Dynamo stadium has hardly changed over the past 70 years, except that instead of large stands, buildings have appeared for other sports.
In 1942, only one of the three reserve fields was suitable for playing football at Dynamo. A German shell fell on the main platform. On the other two they grew rutabaga and cabbage. And only on the third field, to the left of the main entrance, it was possible to play football, although also not without restrictions.

“When they went out onto the field, they were told: try not to kick into touch, because there are potatoes planted there.” Potatoes during a blockade are life. When the first half ended, the players were asked to rest, but they replied that they would not rest, because if they sat down, they would no longer be able to get up, says German Zonin.

The testimonies of the players make it clear how difficult it was for them.

Anatoly MISHUK, Zenit player, midfielder of the N-factory team:

– In the spring, I was placed in a factory hospital in the last stage of dystrophy. When I came out of there, Zyablikov found me and said that there would be a game. It seems that I was the weakest of our lot. I remember this episode: there is a weak long transmission. I, as I did hundreds of times in pre-war matches, take the ball with my head, and he... knocks me down.

“THE WAR IS OUTSIDE, AND THERE IS SOME
SHANTRAPA IS RUNNING THE BALL!”

Information about how many fans were at the game is reported by different sources - from several dozen wounded from a nearby hospital to 350 graduates of command courses. Before the war, Dynamo were the favorites of the city, they were known by sight, but the hardships of the blockade changed people beyond recognition. The Leningraders who found themselves at the meeting site were extremely amazed when they realized who was in front of them.

Evgeniy Ulitin, Dynamo player:

“On the eve of the game, the unit where I served as a communications sergeant received a telephone message saying that I needed to come to the match. Early morning I hitched a ride to Leningrad and got off the truck near Palace Square. Then I walked to the stadium. There I hugged my comrades, picked up my boots and uniform. “There’s a war outside, and here’s some scoundrel kicking a ball!” – the fans were indignant. They simply did not recognize their recent idols. In the first minutes, neither our legs nor the ball obeyed us. But the guys slowly got excited, and the game started. “Bah! Yes, this is Oreshkin! Nabutov! Fedorov! – was heard from the stands, which immediately thawed and began to cheer to the fullest. Despite the warm day, it was difficult to play; at the end of the match my legs were cramping. However, most of the Dynamo players had much more strength than our rivals. In addition, there was a field player in their goal. This largely explains the large score. As the game progressed, I wanted to make a change, but we had great difficulty recruiting people for two teams. The meeting participants left the field hugging each other. And not only because they were proud of each other - it was just easier to walk. I returned to my unit near Shlisselburg and could barely walk for two weeks.

The football players perfectly understood the importance of the mission entrusted to them. It was necessary to disgrace fascist propaganda and give the city hope for a peaceful life.

Valentin FEDOROV:

- It was difficult. And the muscles hurt terribly, and the ball seemed heavier than usual. And he didn't fly that far. But all this was nothing compared to the mood. We understood how important it was to just play...

Indeed, the radio report about the game, which appeared the next day, was greeted with extraordinary enthusiasm on the front lines. Former Dynamo striker Nikolai Svetlov wrote about this in a letter: “I will never forget the day when, in the trenches in the Sinyavinsky swamps, 500 meters from the Germans, I heard a report from the Dynamo stadium.” At first I didn't believe it. He ran to the dugout to the radio operators. They confirmed: that’s right, they are broadcasting football. What happened to the soldiers! Everyone was excited."

MYTHS AND LEGENDS

Around the blockade match, or rather blockade matches - we know that there were several of them - there is a lot of dubious information, and sometimes outright speculation. But what is important is that in the difficult year of 1942, in besieged Leningrad, they actually played football, and more than once. At the same time, a number of photographs of the supposedly blockade match have no relation to it, since they depict a game at the dilapidated Lenin Stadium, and not at Dynamo. There was and could not be a direct radio broadcast to the Soviet and German trenches. On the radio they talked about the game in a recording.

“There was no reporting on the enemy trenches,” says Kirill Nabutov. - Intelligence was working. In the case of live reporting, the Germans would instantly determine where the match was taking place and could easily fire at a crowded area. And so there were shots, but far away. A shell fell a few hundred meters away, and that was all. As always, reality is more modest than the legends that accompany it. I spoke with the Austrian communist Fritz Fuchs. During the siege, he worked on Leningrad radio, broadcasting propaganda news broadcasts in German that were broadcast to enemy troops. Someone on the radio told him: “Did you hear? Yesterday we played football at Dynamo” - “What are you talking about? Of course I’ll tell you about it!” And in the news broadcast he reported on the match. There were many blockade matches.

“In 2018, TO THE MONUMENT TO FOOTBALL PLAYERS-
FLOWERS WILL BE LAID TO THE BLOCKAGE DEVICES"

On May 31, on the 70th anniversary of the legendary match, a monument will be unveiled next to the field where the game took place: two fighting football players, next to it there is a bench on which flowers and military uniforms lie. St. Petersburg TV commentator Gennady Orlov hopes that the matter will not be limited to the opening of the monument and the memorial plaque that appeared in 1991.

– Can you imagine, the 2018 World Cup will be attended by football players and fans from the most different countries and lay flowers in memory of the victory of the spirit. The participants in the blockade match were dystrophic. They said, “You better not give us a half-time break, because if we stop, we won’t be able to get up.” I had the honor of knowing many of the participants in the match. Amazing people - such inner beauty! This must be glorified, and there must be a museum,” Orlov is convinced.

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

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

I hope everything is clear?)))