The assault on the Brest fortress. Defenders and heroes of the Brest fortress

The defense of the Brest Fortress (defense of Brest) is one of the very first battles between the Soviet and German armies during the period Great Patriotic War.

Brest was one of the border garrisons on the territory of the USSR, it covered even the central highway leading to Minsk, which is why Brest turned out to be one of the first cities to be attacked after the German attack. The Soviet army held back the enemy's onslaught for a week, despite the numerical superiority of the Germans, as well as support from artillery and aviation. As a result of a prolonged siege, the Germans were still able to seize the main fortifications of the Brest Fortress and destroy them, but in other areas the struggle continued for quite a long time - small groups left after the raid resisted the enemy with their last strength. The defense of the Brest Fortress became a very important battle in which Soviet troops were able to show their readiness to defend themselves to the last drop of blood, despite the enemy's advantages. The defense of Brest went down in history as one of the bloodiest sieges, and at the same time as one of the greatest battles that showed all the courage of the Soviet army.

Brest Fortress on the eve of the war

The city of Brest became part of the Soviet Union shortly before the start of the war - in 1939. By that time, the fortress had already lost its military significance due to the beginning of the destruction, and remained as one of the reminders of past battles. The Brest Fortress was built in the 19th century and was part of the defensive fortifications of the Russian Empire on its western borders, but in the 20th century it ceased to be of military importance. By the time the war began, the Brest Fortress was mainly used to house garrisons of military personnel, as well as a number of families of the military command, a hospital and utility rooms. By the time of Germany's treacherous attack on the USSR, about 8,000 servicemen and about 300 families of the command lived in the fortress. There were weapons and supplies in the fortress, but their number was not calculated for the conduct of military operations.

Storming the Brest Fortress

The assault on the Brest Fortress began on the morning of June 22, 1941, simultaneously with the beginning of the Great Patriotic War. The barracks and dwelling houses of the command were the first to be subjected to powerful artillery fire and attacks from the aviation, since the Germans wanted, first of all, to completely destroy the entire command staff in the fortress and thereby bring confusion to the army and disorient it. Despite the fact that almost all the officers were killed, the surviving soldiers were able to quickly orient themselves and create a powerful defense. The surprise factor did not work as expected Hitler and the assault, which was scheduled to end by 12 noon, lasted for several days.

Even before the start of the war, the Soviet command issued a decree according to which, in the event of an attack, servicemen must immediately leave the fortress itself and take positions along its perimeter, but only a few managed to do this - most of the soldiers remained in the fortress. The defenders of the fortress were in a deliberately losing position, but even this fact did not allow them to surrender their positions and allow the Germans to quickly and unconditionally seize Brest.

The heroic defense of the Brest Fortress became a bright page in the history of the Great Patriotic War. On June 22, 1941, the command of the Nazi troops planned to completely seize the fortress. As a result of a surprise attack, the garrison of the Brest Fortress was cut off from the main parts of the Red Army. However, the Nazis met with a fierce rebuff from its defenders.

Units of the 6th and 42nd Infantry Divisions, the 17th Border Detachment and the 132nd Separate Battalion of the NKVD troops - a total of 3,500 people - held back the enemy's onslaught to the end. Most of the defenders of the fortress were killed.

When Soviet troops liberated the Brest Fortress on July 28, 1944, the inscription of its last defender was found on the melted bricks of one of the casemates: “I am dying, but I do not surrender! Farewell, Motherland ", scratched on July 20, 1941.

Kholmsk gate

Many participants in the defense of the Brest Fortress were posthumously awarded orders and medals. On May 8, 1965, by the decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, the Brest Fortress was awarded the honorary title "Hero-Fortress" and the "Gold Star" medal.

In 1971, a memorial appeared here: the giant sculptures "Courage" and "Thirst", the pantheon of glory, the Ceremonial Square, the preserved ruins and the restored barracks of the Brest Fortress.

Construction and device

The construction of the fortress on the site of the center of the old city began in 1833 according to the project of the military topographer and engineer Karl Ivanovich Opperman. Initially, temporary earthen fortifications were erected, the first stone in the foundation of the fortress was laid on June 1, 1836. Major construction work was completed by April 26, 1842. The fortress consisted of a citadel and three fortifications protecting it with a total area of ​​4 km² and the length of the main fortress line 6.4 km.

The Citadel, or Central Fortification, consisted of two two-storey red brick barracks 1.8 km in circumference. The citadel, which had walls two meters thick, consisted of 500 casemates, designed for 12 thousand people. The central fortification is located on an island formed by the Bug and two branches of the Mukhavets. Three artificial islands formed by Mukhavets and moats are connected with this island by drawbridges. There are fortifications on them: Kobrin (formerly Northern, the largest), with 4 curtains and 3 ravelins and caponiers; Terespolskoe, or Western, with 4 lunettes; Volynskoe, or Yuzhnoe, with 2 curtains and 2 raised ravelins. The former "casemated redoubt" now houses the Nativity of the Theotokos monastery. The fortress is surrounded by a 10-meter earthen rampart with casemates in it. Of the eight gates of the fortress, five have survived - the Kholmsky gate (in the south of the citadel), the Terespol gate (in the south-west of the citadel), Northern or Alexander (in the north of the Kobrin fortification), North-western (in the north-west of the Kobrin fortification) and South (in south of the Volyn fortification, Hospital Island). The Brigid Gate (in the west of the citadel), the Brest Gate (in the north of the citadel) and the Eastern Gate (the eastern part of the Kobrin fortification) have not survived to this day.

In 1864-1888, according to the project of Eduard Ivanovich Totleben, the fortress was modernized. It was surrounded by a ring of forts in 32 km in a circle, the Western and Eastern forts were built on the territory of the Kobrin fortification. In 1876, on the territory of the fortress, according to the project of the architect David Ivanovich Grimm, the St. Nicholas Orthodox Church was built.

Fortress at the beginning of the 20th century

In 1913, the construction of the second ring of fortifications began (in its design, in particular, Dmitry Karbyshev took part), which was supposed to have a circumference of 45 km, but it was never completed before the start of the war.

Schematic map of the Brest Fortress and the surrounding forts, 1912.

With the beginning of the First World War, the fortress was intensively preparing for defense, but on the night of August 13, 1915 (according to the old style), during a general retreat, it was abandoned and partially blown up by Russian troops. On March 3, 1918, the Brest Peace was signed in the Citadel, in the so-called White Palace (the former church of the Uniate Basilian monastery, then the officers' meeting). The fortress was in the hands of the Germans until the end of 1918, and then under the control of the Poles. In 1920, it was taken by the Red Army, but was soon lost again, and in 1921, according to the Peace of Riga, it ceded to the Second Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. During the interwar period, the fortress was used as a barracks, a military warehouse and a political prison (opposition politicians were imprisoned here in the 1930s).

Defense of the Brest Fortress in 1939

The day after the start of World War II, September 2, 1939, the Brest Fortress was bombed for the first time by the Germans: German planes dropped 10 bombs, damaging the White Palace. At that time, marching battalions of the 35th and 82nd infantry regiments and a number of other, rather random units, as well as mobilized reservists who were waiting to be sent to their units, were located in the barracks of the fortress.

The garrison of the city and the fortress was subordinated to the operational group "Polesie" of General Franciszek Kleeberg; The retired general Konstantin Plisovsky was appointed head of the garrison on September 11, who formed an combat-ready detachment of 4 battalions (three infantry and an engineer) from the units at his disposal with a total strength of 2000-2500 people, supported by several batteries, two armored trains and a number of Renault tanks FT-17 "during the First World War. The defenders of the fortress did not have anti-tank weapons, meanwhile they had to deal with tanks.
By September 13, families of servicemen were evacuated from the fortress, bridges and passages were mined, the main gates were blocked by tanks, and trenches for infantry were arranged on the earthen ramparts.

Konstantin Plisovsky

General Heinz Guderian's 19th Armored Corps was advancing on Brest nad Bug, moving from East Prussia to meet another German Panzer Division moving from the south. Guderian intended to capture the city of Brest in order to prevent the defenders of the fortress from retreating to the south and link up with the main forces of the Polish task force Narew. The German units had 2 times superiority over the defenders of the fortress in the infantry, in tanks - 4 times, in artillery - 6 times. On September 14, 1939, 77 tanks of the 10th tank division (units of the reconnaissance battalion and the 8th tank regiment) tried to take the city and the fortress on the move, but were repulsed by infantry with the support of 12 FT-17 tanks, which were knocked out at the same time. On the same day, German artillery and aircraft began bombing the fortress. The next morning, after fierce street fighting, the Germans captured most of the city. The defenders retreated to the fortress. On the morning of September 16, the Germans (10th Panzer and 20th Motorized Divisions) began an assault on the fortress, which was repulsed. By evening, the Germans captured the crest of the rampart, but could not break through further. Two FT-17s placed at the gates of the fortress inflicted heavy losses on German tanks. In total, since September 14, 7 German attacks have been repulsed, while up to 40% of the personnel of the defenders of the fortress have been lost. During the assault, Guderian's adjutant was mortally wounded. On the night of September 17, the wounded Plisovsky gave the order to leave the fortress and cross the Bug to the south. On the undamaged bridge, the troops went to the Terespol fortification and from there to Terespol.

On September 22, Brest was handed over by the Germans to the 29th Tank Brigade of the Red Army. Thus, Brest and the Brest Fortress became part of the USSR.

Defense of the Brest Fortress in 1941. On the eve of the war

By June 22, 1941, 8 rifle and 1 reconnaissance battalion, 2 artillery battalions (anti-tank defense and air defense), some special divisions of rifle regiments and corps units were stationed in the fortress, training of the assigned personnel of the 6th Oryol and 42nd rifle divisions of the 28th rifle corps of the 4th army, units of the 17th Red Banner Brest border detachment, the 33rd separate engineering regiment, several units of the 132nd separate battalion of the NKVD convoy troops, unit headquarters (the headquarters of the divisions and the 28th rifle corps were located in Brest), in total 9-11 thousand people, not counting family members (300 families of military personnel).

The storming of the fortress, the city of Brest and the capture of bridges across the Western Bug and Mukhavets was entrusted to the 45th Infantry Division of Major General Fritz Schlieper (about 17 thousand people) with reinforcement units and in cooperation with parts of neighboring formations (including mortar divisions attached to The 31st and 34th Infantry Divisions of the 12th Army Corps of the 4th German Army and used by the 45th Infantry Division during the first five minutes of the artillery raid), for a total of up to 20 thousand people. But to be precise, the Brest Fortress was stormed not by the Germans, but by the Austrians. In 1938, after the Anschluss (accession) of Austria to the Third Reich, the 4th Austrian division was renamed the 45th Infantry Division of the Wehrmacht - the same one that crossed the border on June 22, 1941.

Storming the fortress

On June 22 at 3:15 am (European time) or 4:15 am (Moscow time), a hurricane of artillery fire was opened at the fortress, taking the garrison by surprise. As a result, warehouses were destroyed, water pipes were damaged, communications were interrupted, and heavy losses were inflicted on the garrison. At 3:23 the assault began. Up to 1,500 infantry from three battalions of the 45th Infantry Division attacked directly on the fortress. The unexpectedness of the attack led to the fact that the garrison could not provide a unified coordinated resistance and was divided into several separate centers. The assault detachment of the Germans, advancing through the Terespol fortification, initially did not meet serious resistance, and after passing the Citadel, advanced groups went to the Kobrin fortification. However, the units of the garrison, which found themselves in the rear of the Germans, launched a counterattack, dismembering and partially destroying the attackers.

The Germans in the Citadel were able to gain a foothold only in certain areas, including the club building dominating the fortress (the former Church of St. Nicholas), the canteen for the command staff and a section of the barracks at the Brest Gate. They met strong resistance on the Volynsky and, especially, on the Kobrin fortification, where it came to bayonet attacks. A small part of the garrison with some of the equipment managed to leave the fortress and connect with their units; by 9 o'clock in the morning the fortress with 6-8 thousand people remaining in it was surrounded. During the day, the Germans were forced to bring into battle the reserve of the 45th Infantry Division, as well as the 130th Infantry Regiment, which was originally a corps reserve, thus bringing the grouping of assaults to two regiments.

Defense

On the night of June 23, having withdrawn the troops to the outer ramparts of the fortress, the Germans began shelling, in the intervals offering the garrison to surrender. Around 1900 people surrendered. But, nevertheless, on June 23, the remaining defenders of the fortress succeeded, knocking the Germans out of the section of the circular barracks adjacent to the Brest Gate, to unite the two most powerful centers of resistance remaining on the Citadel - the battle group of the 455th rifle regiment, headed by Lieutenant A.A. Vinogradov and Captain I.N. Zubachev, and the battle group of the so-called "House of Officers" (the units concentrated here for the planned breakthrough attempt were led by Regimental Commissar E.M.Fomin, Senior Lieutenant Shcherbakov and Private Shugurov (executive secretary of the Komsomol Bureau of separate reconnaissance battalion).

Having met in the basement of the "House of Officers", the defenders of the Citadel tried to coordinate their actions: a draft order No. 1 dated June 24 was prepared, in which it was proposed to create a combined combat group and headquarters headed by Captain I. N. Zubachev and his deputy regimental commissar E. M. Fomin, calculate the remaining personnel. However, the next day, the Germans burst into the Citadel with a surprise attack. A large group of Citadel defenders, led by Lieutenant A.A.Vinogradov, tried to break through from the Fortress through the Kobrin fortification. But this ended in failure: although the breakthrough group, divided into several detachments, managed to break through the main rampart, its fighters were captured or destroyed by units of the 45th Infantry Division, which were defended by the highway that skirted Brest.

By the evening of June 24, the Germans captured most of the fortress, with the exception of the section of the ring barracks ("Officers' House") near the Brest (Three-Arched) gates of the Citadel, casemates in the earthen rampart on the opposite bank of the Mukhavets ("point 145") and the so-called "Eastern Fort" (its defense, which consisted of 400 soldiers and commanders of the Red Army, was commanded by Major P. M. Gavrilov). On this day, the Germans managed to capture 1250 defenders of the Fortress.

The last 450 defenders of the Citadel were captured on June 26 after blowing up several compartments of the circular barracks of the "House of Officers" and point 145, and on June 29, after the Germans dropped a bomb weighing 1800 kg, the Eastern Fort fell. However, the Germans managed to finally clean it up only on June 30 (due to the fires that began on June 29). On June 27, the Germans began using 600-mm Karl-Gerät artillery, firing concrete-piercing shells weighing more than 2 tons and a high-explosive mass of 1250 kg. After the explosion of a 600-mm shell, craters with a diameter of 30 meters were formed and terrible injuries were inflicted on the defenders, including the rupture of the lungs of those who were hiding in the basement of the fortress from shock waves.

The organized defense of the fortress ended there; there remained only isolated centers of resistance and single fighters who gathered in groups and again dispersed and died, or tried to break out of the fortress and go to the partisans in Belovezhskaya Pushcha (some succeeded). Major P. M. Gavrilov was among the last to be captured wounded on 23 July. One of the inscriptions in the fortress reads: “I am dying, but I am not giving up. Goodbye, Motherland. 20 / VII-41 ". According to the testimony of witnesses, the shooting was heard from the fortress until the beginning of August.

P.M. Gavrilov

The total losses of the Germans in the Brest Fortress amounted to 5% of the total losses of the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front in the first week of the war.

There were reports that the last areas of resistance were destroyed only at the end of August, before A. Hitler and B. Mussolini visited the fortress. It is also known that the stone that A. Hitler took from the ruins of the bridge was discovered in his office after the end of the war.

To eliminate the last pockets of resistance, the German high command issued an order to flood the basements of the fortress with water from the Western Bug River.

Memory of the defenders of the fortress

For the first time, the defense of the Brest Fortress became known from the German headquarters report captured in the papers of the defeated unit in February 1942 near Orel. In the late 1940s, newspapers published the first articles about the defense of the Brest Fortress, based solely on rumors. In 1951, during the analysis of the rubble of the barracks at the Brest Gate, order No. 1 was found. In the same year, the artist P. Krivonogov painted the picture "Defenders of the Brest Fortress."

The merit of restoring the memory of the heroes of the fortress in many respects belongs to the writer and historian S.S.Smirnov, as well as K.M.Simonov, who supported his initiative. The feat of the heroes of the Brest Fortress was popularized by S. S. Smirnov in the book "Brest Fortress" (1957, expanded edition 1964, Lenin Prize 1965). After that, the theme of the defense of the Brest Fortress became an important symbol of the Victory.

Monument to the defenders of the Brest Fortress

On May 8, 1965, the Brest Fortress was awarded the title of Hero Fortress with the Order of Lenin and the Gold Star medal. Since 1971, the fortress has been a memorial complex. On its territory, a number of monuments have been built in memory of the heroes, there is a museum of the defense of the Brest Fortress.

Sources of information:

http://ru.wikipedia.org

http://www.brest-fortress.by

http://www.calend.ru

One of the first to take the blow of the fascist troops was the heroic Brest Fortress. The Germans were already near Smolensk, and the defenders of the fortress continued to resist the enemy.

Defenders of the Brest Fortress. Hood. P.A. Krivonogov. 1951 / photo: O. Ignatovich / RIA Novosti

The defense of the Brest Fortress went down in history solely thanks to the feat of its small garrison - those who in the first days and weeks of the war did not succumb to panic, did not flee and did not surrender, but fought to the end ...

Fivefold superiority

In accordance with the "Barbarossa" plan, one of the main strike wedges of the invasion army, the right wing of the "Center" group as part of the 4th field army and the 2nd tank group (19 infantry, 5 tank, 3 motorized, 1 cavalry , 2 security divisions, 1 motorized brigade). The forces of the Wehrmacht concentrated here, only in terms of personnel, were almost five times superior to the forces of the opposing 4th Soviet army under the command of a major general Alexandra Korobkova, responsible for covering the direction Brest - Baranovichi. The German command decided to force the Western Bug with tank divisions south and north of Brest, and the General's 12th Army Corps was assigned to storm the fortress itself Walter Schroth.

"It was impossible to bypass the fortress and leave it unoccupied," the commander of the 4th Army of the Wehrmacht, Field Marshal, reported to his superiors Gunther von Kluge- since it blocked important crossings across the Bug and access roads to both tank highways, which were of decisive importance for the transfer of troops, and above all for ensuring supplies. "

The Brest Fortress is located to the west of the city - in the place where the Mukhavets River flows into the Bug, on the very border. Built in the 19th century, in 1941 it had no defensive significance, and the fortress buildings were used as warehouses and barracks to house units of the Red Army. On the eve of World War II, units of the 28th Infantry Corps (primarily the 6th Oryol Red Banner and 42nd Infantry Divisions), the 33rd separate engineer regiment of district subordination, the 132nd separate battalion of the NKVD escort troops, as well as regimental schools were located here. , transport companies, musician platoons, staff and other units. There were two military hospitals on the territory of the Volyn fortification. The border guards of the 9th outpost of the 17th Red Banner border detachment were serving in the fortress.

In the event of the outbreak of hostilities, the quartered units had to leave the fortress and occupy the fortified areas on the border.

“The deployment of Soviet troops in Western Belarus,” wrote the general Leonid Sandalov(in June 1941 - Chief of Staff of the 4th Army), - at first it was not subordinated to operational considerations, but was determined by the presence of barracks and premises suitable for the deployment of troops. This, in particular, explained the crowded location of half of the 4th Army's troops with all their stores of emergency reserves (NZ) on the very border - in Brest and the former Brest Fortress. "

To leave the fortress, combat units needed at least three hours. But when the commander of the Western Special Military District, Army General Dmitry Pavlov gave the order to bring the troops into combat readiness, it was already too late: about half an hour remained before the start of the German artillery preparation.

The beginning of the invasion

Despite the fact that on the eve of the war, a significant part of the personnel was employed in the construction of the Brest fortified region, on the night of June 22, there were from 7 thousand to 9 thousand military personnel in the fortress, as well as about 300 families (more than 600 people) of commanders Red Army. The state of the fortress garrison was well known to the German command. It decided that the powerful bombing and artillery strikes would so overwhelm the people taken by surprise that it would not be difficult for the assault subunits to occupy the fortress and carry out its "cleansing". Several hours were allotted for the entire operation.

It seemed that the enemy did everything to make this happen. The 45th Infantry Division, a regiment of special-purpose heavy mortars, two divisions of mortars, nine howitzers and two artillery mounts of the "Karl" system, whose 600-mm guns fired concrete-piercing and high-explosive shells weighing 2200 and 1700 kg, respectively. The Germans concentrated their artillery on the left bank of the Bug in such a way that the blows fell across the entire territory of the fortress and struck as many of its defenders as possible. The shots of the guns of the special power "Karl" were supposed not only to lead to enormous destruction, but also to demoralize the survivors after the shelling and induce them to immediately surrender.

5-10 minutes before the start of the artillery preparation, German assault groups captured all six bridges across the Western Bug in the Brest region. At 4:15 pm Moscow time, the artillery opened a hurricane of fire on Soviet territory, and the advance units of the invasion army began to cross the eastern bank of the Bug over bridges and boats. The attack was sudden and merciless. Thick clouds of smoke and dust, pierced by fiery explosions, rose above the fortress. Houses burned and collapsed, servicemen, women and children died in the fire and under the ruins ...

History of the Brest Fortress

Brest-Litovsk became part of Russia in 1795 - after the third partition of the Commonwealth. To strengthen the new borders in St. Petersburg, it was decided to build several fortresses. One of them was supposed to appear on the site of the city of Brest-Litovsk. The solemn ceremony of laying the first stone of the future fortress took place on June 1, 1836, and already in 1842 the Brest-Litovsk fortress became one of the active class I fortresses of the Russian Empire.

The fortress consisted of the Citadel and three extensive fortifications, forming the main fortress fence and covering the Citadel from all sides: Volynsky (from the south), Terespolsky (from the west) and Kobrin (from the east and north). From the outside, the fortress was defended by a bastion front - a fortress fence (earthen rampart with brick casemates inside) 10 meters high, 6.4 km long and a bypass channel filled with water. The total area of ​​the fortress was 4 square meters. km (400 hectares). The citadel was a natural island, along the entire perimeter of which a closed two-story defensive barracks with a length of 1.8 km was built. The thickness of the outer walls reached 2 m, the inner ones - 1.5 m. The barracks consisted of 500 casemates, which could accommodate up to 12 thousand soldiers with ammunition and food.

In 1864-1888, the fortress was modernized according to the project of the hero of the Crimean War, General Eduard Totleben, and was surrounded by a ring of forts 32 km in circumference. On the eve of the First World War, the construction of the second ring of fortifications with a length of 45 km was started (the future Soviet general Dmitry Karbyshev took part in its design), but it was never completed before the outbreak of hostilities.

The Russian army did not have to defend the Brest Fortress then: the rapid offensive of the Kaiser's troops in August 1915 forced the command to decide to leave the fortress without a fight. In December 1917, negotiations were held in Brest on an armistice at the front between the delegations of Soviet Russia, on the one hand, and Germany and its allies (Austria-Hungary, Turkey, Bulgaria), on the other. On March 3, 1918, the Peace of Brest was concluded in the building of the White Palace of the fortress.

As a result of the Soviet-Polish war of 1919-1920, the Brest Fortress became Polish for almost 20 years. It was used by the Poles as a barracks, a military warehouse and a maximum security political prison, where the most dangerous state criminals were kept. In 1938-1939, the Ukrainian nationalist Stepan Bandera was serving his sentence here, who organized the murder of the head of the Polish Ministry of Internal Affairs and was sentenced to death, which was later changed to life imprisonment.

On September 1, 1939, Nazi Germany attacked Poland. The Polish garrison surrounded in the fortress resisted from 14 to 16 September. On the night of September 17, the defenders left the fortress. On the same day, the Red Army's liberation campaign began in Western Belarus: Soviet troops crossed the state border in the area of ​​Minsk, Slutsk and Polotsk. The city of Brest, together with the fortress, became part of the USSR.

In 1965, the fortress, whose defenders in the summer of 1941 showed unparalleled heroism, was awarded the title "Hero Fortress".

S. S. SMIRNOV Brest Fortress (any edition);
***
A. M. Suvorov Brest Fortress on the winds of history. Brest, 2004;
***
Brest Fortress ... Facts, evidence, discoveries / V.V. Gubarenko et al. Brest, 2005.

The first assault

Of course, the shelling of the barracks, bridges and the entrance gates of the fortress caused confusion among the soldiers. The surviving commanders could not penetrate the barracks due to heavy fire, and the Red Army men, having lost contact with them, on their own, in groups and one by one, under artillery and machine-gun fire from the enemy, tried to escape from the trap. Some officers, such as the commander of the 44th Rifle Regiment, Major Petr Gavrilov, managed to break through to their units, but it was no longer possible to withdraw the people from the fortress. It is believed that in the first few hours about half of those who were in the barracks on its territory managed to leave the fortress. At 9 o'clock in the morning, the fortress was already surrounded, and those who remained had to make a choice: surrender or continue the struggle in hopeless conditions. Most preferred the latter.

Wehrmacht gunners are preparing to fire a 600-mm self-propelled mortar "Karl" in the Brest region. June 1941

Pastor of the 45th Infantry Division of the Wehrmacht Rudolf Gschöpf later recalled:

“Exactly at 3.15 a hurricane began and swept over our heads with such a force that we had never experienced either before, or in the entire subsequent course of the war. This gigantic, concentrated barrage of fire literally shook the earth. Dense black fountains of earth and smoke rose like mushrooms over the Citadel. Since at that moment it was impossible to notice the enemy's return fire, we believed that everything in the Citadel was turned into a heap of ruins. Immediately after the last artillery salvo, the infantry began to cross the Bug River and, using the effect of surprise, tried to capture the fortress with a quick and energetic throw. go. It was then that at once bitter disappointment was revealed ...

The Russians were raised by our fire right out of bed: this was evident from the fact that the first prisoners were in their underwear. However, the Russians recovered surprisingly quickly, formed into battle groups behind our breakthrough companies and began to organize a desperate and stubborn defense.

Major General A.A. Korobkov

Regimental commissar E.M. Fomin

Having overcome the initial confusion, the Soviet soldiers hid the wounded, women, children in the basements and began to cut off and destroy the Nazis who had broken through to the fortress, and build up the defense of the most dangerous areas. In the western part of the Citadel, lieutenants led the fighting Andrey Kizhevatov and Alexander Potapov, at the Kholmsky Gate and in the Engineering Department - regimental commissar Efim Fomin, in the area of ​​the White Palace and the barracks of the 33rd Engineer Regiment - Senior Lieutenant Nikolay Shcherbakov, at the Brest (Three-Arch) Gates - Lieutenant Anatoly Vinogradov.

Major P.M. Gavrilov

“The ranks of the officers were invisible in that hell, but it was like this: whoever speaks skillfully and fights bravely, the better they walked and the better they respected,” recalled the former secretary of the party bureau of the regimental school of the 33rd engineering regiment Fedor Zhuravlev.

The battles that turned into hand-to-hand combat took place on the first day on all fortifications: western - Terespolsky, southern - Volynsky, northern - Kobrin, as well as in the central part of the fortress - Citadel.

Lieutenant A.M. Kizhevatov

The soldiers of the 84th Infantry Regiment attacked the Nazis, who broke through to the Central Island and seized the club building (the former Church of St. , 132nd separate battalion of the NKVD escort troops. The testimony of its participant has been preserved about the counterattack of the soldiers of the 84th Infantry Regiment at the Kholmsky Gate Samvel Matevosyan(in June 1941, the executive secretary of the regiment's Komsomol bureau):

“When he shouted:“ Follow me! For the Motherland! " - many are ahead of me. Literally at the exit I ran into a German officer. The big guy is tall, I'm lucky that he is also armed with a pistol. In a split second ... they shot at the same time, he hooked my right temple, but he stayed ... I bandaged the wound, our orderly helped me. "

The surviving German soldiers were blocked in the church building.

Lieutenant A.A. Vinogradov

"Our situation is hopeless"

The morning assault failed. The first victory strengthened the spirit of those who were overpowered by the force and suddenness of the artillery raid and the death of their comrades. The heavy losses of the assault groups on the very first day of the offensive forced the German command to decide to withdraw its units to the outer ramparts of the fortress at night, surrounding it with a dense ring in order to break the resistance of the defenders with the help of artillery and aviation. Shelling began, interrupted by calls through the loudspeaker to surrender.

Trapped in the basements, people, especially the wounded, women and young children, suffered from the heat, smoke and the stench of decaying dead bodies. But the worst test was thirst. The water supply system was destroyed, and the Nazis kept all approaches to the river or the bypass canal under targeted fire. Every flask, every sip of water was obtained at the cost of life.

Realizing that they could no longer save children and women from death, the Citadel's defenders decided to send them prisoner. Addressing the wives of the commanders, Lieutenant Kizhevatov said:

“Our situation is hopeless ... You are mothers, and your sacred duty to the Motherland is to save children. This is our order for you. "

He assured his wife:

“Don't worry about me. I will not be taken prisoner. I will fight until my last breath, and even when there is not a single defender left in the fortress. "

Several dozen people, including wounded soldiers and, possibly, those who have already exhausted their strength to fight, went out under a white flag to the Western Island along the Terespolsky bridge. On the fourth day of defense, the defenders of the eastern ramparts of the fortress did the same, sending their relatives to the Germans.

Most of the family members of the commanders of the Red Army did not manage to survive until the liberation of Brest. At first, the Germans, having kept them for a short time in prison, released everyone, and they settled as best they could somewhere in the city or its environs. But in 1942, the occupation authorities carried out several raids, deliberately looking for and shooting the wives, children and relatives of Soviet commanders. Then the lieutenant's mother was killed Kizhevatova Anastasia Ivanovna, his wife Ekaterina and their three children: Vanya, Galya and Anya. In the fall of 1942, a three-year-old boy was killed. Dima Shulzhenko rescued by unknown heroes on the first day of the war - he was shot along with his aunt Elena ...

Who knows why the Germans did this: maybe they were taking revenge for their impotence, for the defeat near Moscow? Or were they guided by the fear of inevitable retribution, which they were reminded of by the casemates of the fortress, which had long been silent by that time, melted by fire? ..

Memories of the defenders

Photo by Igor Zotin and Vladimir Mezhevich / TASS photo chronicle

Any description of the first days of the war, and especially the events in the Brest Fortress, is forced to rely almost exclusively on the memories of their participants - those who managed to survive. The documents of the headquarters of the 4th Army, and even more so of the divisions that were part of it, were mostly lost: they were burned during the bombings or, so as not to get to the enemy, they were destroyed by staff workers. Therefore, until now, historians do not have accurate data on the number of units found in the Brest "mousetrap" and the places of their quartering, and they reconstruct and even date the episodes of the battle in different ways. Thanks to the many years of work of the staff of the Museum of the Heroic Defense of the Brest Fortress, opened in 1956, as well as the journalistic investigation of the writer Sergei Smirnov, a whole collection of memoirs has been collected. It's hard, scary to read them.

“Our apartment was located in the Terespolskaya Tower,” recalled Valentina, daughter of the foreman of the musician platoon of the 33rd Engineer Regiment. Ivana Zenkina... - During the shelling of the Terespolskaya tower, two water tanks were pierced by shells. Water poured from the ceiling onto the stairs and began to flood our apartment. We did not understand what was the matter. The father said: “This is war, daughter. Get dressed, go downstairs, fragments are flying here. And I have to go to the regiment. "

Silently stroked my head. So I parted with my father forever. Over the rumble, roar and smoke, we did not hear and did not see how the enemies burst into the premises of the power plant and began to throw grenades ahead of us, shouting:

"Rus, give up!" One grenade went off near the power plant. Children, women screamed. We were driven to the bank of the Mukhavets River. Then we saw the wounded Red Army soldiers lying on the ground. Fascists were standing over them with machine guns. From the windows of the casemates between the Kholmsk Gate and the Terespol Tower, the fighters opened fire on the fascists who had captured us.

But when they saw women and children, they stopped shooting in our direction. “Shoot, why did you stop? The Nazis will shoot us anyway! Shoot! " - one of the wounded Red Army men shouted, standing up. Before my eyes, they began to beat with boots one of our wounded black-haired fighter. They shouted, insulted, showing with gestures that he was a Jew. I felt very sorry for this man. I grabbed the fascist and began to drag him away. "This is a Georgian, this is a Georgian," I repeated ... "

Another vivid evidence of the courage of the defenders of the fortress left Natalia Mikhailovna Kontrovska me, the lieutenant's wife Sergey Chuvikov.

“I saw,” she said, “what heroism the soldiers-border guards, fighters and commanders of the 333rd Infantry Regiment showed ... I will never forget a border guard wounded by a machine-gun burst in both legs. When I helped him and the women wanted to take him to shelter, he protested, asked to tell Lieutenant Kizhevatov that he could still beat the Nazis while lying at the machine gun. His request was granted. In the afternoon of June 22, when the hurricane of artillery fire died down for a while, we saw from the basement that not far from the commandant's office, among the heaps of ruins lay Tonya Shulzhenko and her little son was crawling near her corpse. The boy was in the zone of constant shelling. I will never forget the fighter who saved Dima. He crawled after the child. He stretched out his hand to pull the boy to him, and so he remained lying ... Then the two wounded crawled to Dima again, rescued him. The kid was injured ... "

Heroic Defense. Collection of memoirs about the heroic defense of the Brest Fortress in June-July 1941. Minsk, 1963;
***
A. A. Grebenkina Living pain. Women and children of the Brest garrison (1941-1944). Minsk, 2008.

"I am dying, but I am not giving up!"

On June 24, the defenders of the Citadel tried to coordinate their actions in order to prepare a breakthrough from the fortress in order to escape into the forests, to the partisans. This is evidenced by the draft order No. 1, the text of which was found in 1951 during search operations in the basement of the barracks at the Brest Gate in the field bag of the unknown Soviet commander. The order dealt with the unification of several battle groups and the creation of a headquarters headed by a captain Ivan Zubachev and his deputy regimental commissar Efim Fomin... An attempt to break through was made under the command of Lieutenant Anatoly Vinogradov through the Kobrin fortification on the morning of June 26, but almost all of its participants died or were captured after they managed to overcome the outer ramparts of the fortress.

The inscription on the wall of one of the casemates of the Brest Fortress: “I am dying, but I am not giving up! Goodbye, Motherland. 20 / VII-41 "/ photo: Lev Polikashin / RIA Novosti

By the end of the third day of the war, after the introduction of reserves into battle (now the units operating here already numbered two regiments), the Germans were able to establish control over most of the fortress. The defenders of the ring barracks near the Brest Gate, casemates in the earthen rampart on the opposite bank of the Mukhavets River and the Eastern Fort on the territory of the Kobrin fortification fought the longest. Part of the barracks, where the defense headquarters was located, was destroyed as a result of several explosions carried out by German sappers. The defenders of the Citadel, including the leaders of the defense, died or were captured (Fomin was shot shortly after his capture, and Zubachev died in 1944 in the Hammelburg prisoner of war camp). After June 29, only isolated pockets of resistance and single soldiers who gathered in groups and tried to break out of the encirclement at all costs remained in the fortress. One of the last among the defenders of the fortress was taken prisoner by Major Peter Gavrilov- it happened on July 23, on the 32nd day of the war.

German soldiers in the courtyard of the Brest Fortress after its capture

Staff Sergeant Sergey Kuvalin, captured on July 1, among other prisoners of war, worked to clear the rubble near the Terespolskie gates.

“On July 14-15, a detachment of German soldiers, about 50 people, passed by us. When they approached the gate, an explosion suddenly sounded in the middle of their formation, and everything was clouded with smoke. It turns out that this one of our fighters was still sitting in the destroyed tower above the gate. He dropped a bunch of grenades on the Germans, killing 10 people and seriously wounding many, and then jumped down from the tower and crashed to death. We did not know who he was, this unknown hero, we were not allowed to bury him, ”recalled Sergei Kuvalin, who had gone through many German camps and escaped from captivity at the end of the war.

In 1952, an inscription was found on the wall of the casemate in the northwestern part of the defensive barracks:

“I am dying, but I am not giving up! Goodbye, Motherland. 20 / VII-41 ".

Unfortunately, the name of this hero also remained unknown ...

The path to immortality

Memorial complex "Brest Hero-Fortress" in Belarus Lyudmila Ivanova / Interpress / TASS

Having easily defeated Poland, France, Belgium, Denmark, Norway, capturing hundreds of cities and fortresses, the Germans for the first time since the beginning of World War II faced such a stubborn defense of a generally very insignificant fortified point. For the first time they met with the army, whose soldiers, even realizing the hopelessness of their position, preferred death in battle to captivity.

Perhaps it was in Brest, losing soldiers and officers in battles with the defenders of the fortress dying of hunger and thirst, that the Germans began to understand that the war in Russia would not be an easy walk, as the high command had promised them. Indeed, as the German army advanced to the east, the resistance of the Red Army increased - and in December 1941, for the first time since the beginning of the war, the Nazis suffered a major defeat near Moscow.

It would seem that the scale of events near the walls of a small border fortress cannot be compared with the grandiose battles of this war. However, it was there, at the walls of the Brest Fortress, that the road of unparalleled courage, the feat of the Soviet people who defended their Fatherland, began, the road that eventually led us to Victory.

Yuri Nikiforov,
Candidate of Historical Sciences

In February 1942, during the Yelets offensive operation, Soviet troops defeated a four-infantry division of the Wehrmacht. At the same time, the archive of the division headquarters was seized, in the documents of which very important papers were found - "Battle report on the occupation of Brest-Litovsk." “The Russians in Brest-Litovsk fought extremely stubbornly and persistently. They showed excellent infantry training and proved remarkable will to fight, ”said the report of the commander of the 45th division, Lieutenant General Schlieper. It was then that the Soviet troops learned the truth about the battles for the Brest Fortress.

Smash in no time

In the early morning of June 22, 1941, after air and artillery preparation, German troops crossed the border of the USSR. On the same day, Italy and Romania declared war on the USSR, a little later - Slovakia, Hungary and other allies of Germany. Most of the Soviet troops were taken by surprise, and therefore, on the first day, a significant part of the ammunition and military equipment was destroyed. Also, the Germans gained complete air supremacy, knocking out more than 1.2 thousand aircraft of the Soviet army. This is how the Great Patriotic War began.

According to the plan of the Barbarossa attack on the USSR, the German command hoped to defeat the Soviet army in the shortest possible time, not allowing it to come to its senses and organize a coordinated resistance.

Photo report:"I am dying, but I am not giving up!"

Is_photorep_included9701423: 1

The defenders of the Brest Fortress were among the first to fight for the Motherland. On the eve of the war, about half of the number of personnel was withdrawn from the fortress to the training camps. Thus, in the Brest Fortress on the morning of June 22, there were about 9 thousand soldiers and commanders, not counting the staff and patients of the hospital. The storming of the fortress and the city of Brest was entrusted to the 45th Infantry Division of Major General Fritz Schlieper in cooperation with units of neighboring military formations. In total, about 20 thousand people took part in the assault. In addition, the Germans had an advantage in artillery. In addition to the divisional artillery regiment, the guns of which could not penetrate the one and a half meter walls of the fortifications, two 600-mm self-propelled mortars "Karl", nine mortars of 211 mm caliber and a regiment of multi-barreled rocket mortars of 158.5 mm took part in the attack. At the start of the war, Soviet troops simply did not have such weapons. According to the plan of the German command, the Brest Fortress was supposed to surrender in a maximum of eight hours, and no more.

"Soldiers and officers arrived one by one, half-naked."

The attack began on June 22, 1941 at 4.15 Soviet standard time with a strike of artillery and rocket launchers. Every four minutes, artillery fire was moved 100 meters to the east. Hurricane fire caught the garrison of the fortress by surprise. As a result of the shelling, warehouses were destroyed, communications were interrupted and the garrison suffered significant damage. A little later, the assault on the fortifications began.

At first, due to a surprise attack, the garrison of the fortress was unable to provide coordinated resistance.

“Due to the continuous artillery shelling, suddenly launched by the enemy at 4.00 on 22.6.41, the division's units could not be compactly withdrawn to the concentration areas due to alarm. Soldiers and officers arrived alone, half-naked. From concentrated, it was possible to create a maximum of two battalions. The first battles were fought under the leadership of the regimental commanders, comrades Dorodnykh (84th rifle division), Matveeva (333 bn), Kovtunenko (125 bn). "

(Report of the deputy commander for political affairs of the same 6th rifle division regimental commissar M.N. Butin.)

By 4:00, the assault force, having lost two-thirds of its personnel, captured two bridges connecting the Western and Southern Islands with the Citadel. However, trying to take the fortress as quickly as possible, the German forces were drawn into close combat using small arms, resulting in heavy casualties on both sides.

The battles were oncoming. During one of the successful counterattacks at the Terespol Gate, a German assault group was almost completely destroyed. By 7.00 a group of Soviet troops managed to escape from the fortress, but many servicemen did not succeed in breaking through. It was they who continued their further defense.

The fortress was finally surrounded by nine o'clock in the morning. In the battles during the first day of the assault, the 45th Infantry Division, having carried out at least eight large-scale attacks, suffered unprecedented losses - only 21 officers and 290 soldiers and non-commissioned officers were killed.

Having withdrawn the troops to the outer ramparts of the fortress, the whole next day the German artillery carried out shelling of the defenders' positions. In between, German cars with loudspeakers urged the garrison to surrender. Surrendered about 1.9 thousand people. Nevertheless, the remaining defenders of the fortress managed to knock the Germans out of the section of the circular barracks adjacent to the Brest Gate and unite the two most powerful centers of resistance remaining in the Citadel. And the besieged managed to knock out three tanks. These were captured French Somua S-35 tanks, armed with a 47 mm cannon and having good armor for the start of a war.

Under cover of night, the besieged tried to break out of the encirclement, but this attempt failed. Almost all members of the detachments were captured or destroyed. On June 24, the headquarters of the 45th division reported that the Citadel had been taken and that individual pockets of resistance were being cleared. At 21.40 in the headquarters of the corps it was reported about the capture of the Brest fortress. On this day, German troops really captured most of it. However, there were still several areas of resistance, including the so-called "Eastern Fort", which was defended by 600 soldiers under the command of Major Pyotr Mikhailovich Gavrilov. He was the only senior officer among the defenders. Most of the command was incapacitated in the first minutes of the shelling.

"The prisoner could not even make a swallowing movement"

Despite the fact that by July 1 the main core of the Citadel's defenders had been defeated and dispersed, resistance continued. The fighting took on an almost partisan character. The Germans blocked areas of resistance and tried to destroy the defenders of the fortress. Soviet soldiers, in turn, taking advantage of the surprise and knowledge of the fortifications, conducted sorties and destroyed the invaders. Attempts to break out of the encirclement to the partisans also continued, but the defenders had almost no strength left for a breakthrough.

The resistance of such single scattered groups lasted for almost the entire July. Major Gavrilov is considered the last defender of the Brest Fortress, who, already seriously wounded, was captured only on July 23, 1941. According to the testimony of the doctor who examined him, the major was in an extreme degree of exhaustion:

“... the captive major was in full commander's uniform, but all his clothes turned into rags, his face was covered with powder soot and dust and was overgrown with a beard. He was injured, unconscious, and looked extremely emaciated. It was, in the full sense of the word, a skeleton covered in leather.

The extent to which exhaustion had reached, could be judged by the fact that the prisoner could not even make a swallowing movement: he did not have enough strength for this, and the doctors had to use artificial nutrition to save his life.

But the German soldiers, who took him prisoner and brought him to the camp, told the doctors that this man, in whose body there was barely a glimmer of life, only an hour ago, when they caught him in one of the casemates of the fortress, alone they fought, threw grenades, fired a pistol and killed and wounded several Nazis. "

(Smirnov S.S.Brest Fortress)

The losses of the 45th German Infantry Division as of June 30, 1941 were 482 killed, including 48 officers, and more than 1,000 wounded. Considering that the same division in 1939 during the attack on Poland lost 158 ​​killed and 360 wounded, the losses were very significant. According to the report of the commander of the 45th division, German troops captured 25 officers, 2877 junior commanders and soldiers. 1877 Soviet servicemen were killed in the fortress. By the end of the war, about 400 people remained living defenders of the Brest Fortress.

Major Gavrilov was released from German captivity in May 1945. However, until the mid-1950s, he was expelled from the Communist Party for losing his party card while in concentration camps. Orders and medals were awarded to about 200 defenders of the Brest Fortress, but only two received the title of Hero of the Soviet Union - Major Gavrilov and Lieutenant Kizhevatov (posthumously).

From February 1941, Germany began the transfer of troops to the borders of the Soviet Union. At the beginning of June, reports from the operational departments of the western border districts and armies were almost continuous, indicating that the concentration of German troops near the borders of the USSR was over. The enemy in a number of sectors began to dismantle the barbed wire he had placed earlier and to clear mines on the ground, obviously preparing the passages for his troops to the Soviet border. Large tank groupings of the Germans were withdrawn to their original areas. Everything testified to the imminent start of the war.

At half past midnight on June 22, 1941, a directive signed by People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR S.K. Timoshenko and Chief of the General Staff G.K. Zhukov was sent to the command of the Leningrad, Baltic Special, Western Special, Kiev Special and Odessa Military Districts. It said that during June 22-23, a surprise attack by German troops on the fronts of these districts was possible. It was also indicated that the attack could begin with provocative actions, therefore the task of the Soviet troops was not to succumb to any provocations. However, further emphasis was placed on the need for the districts to be in full combat readiness, to meet a possible surprise attack by the enemy. The directive obliged the commanders of the troops: a) during the night of June 22, secretly occupy firing points of fortified areas on the state border; b) before dawn to disperse all aviation, including military, to field airfields, carefully camouflage it; c) bring all units on alert; keep troops dispersed and disguised; d) bring the air defense to combat readiness without an additional increase in the assigned personnel. Prepare all activities to darken cities and objects. However, the western military districts did not have time to fully comply with this order.

The Great Patriotic War began on June 22, 1941 with the invasion of Army Groups "North", "Center" and "South" in three strategic directions aimed at Leningrad, Moscow, Kiev, with the task of cutting, encircling and destroying the troops of the Soviet border districts in one campaign and go to the line Arkhangelsk - Astrakhan. Already at 4.10 am, the Western and Baltic special districts reported to the General Staff about the beginning of hostilities of the German troops.

The main striking force of Germany, as in the invasion in the west, was four powerful armored groups. Two of them, 2nd and 3rd, were included in the Center Army Group, designed to be the main offensive front, and one each - in the North and South Army Groups. At the forefront of the main attack, the activities of the armored groups were supported by the power of the 4th and 9th field armies, and from the air - by the aviation of the 2nd Air Fleet. In total, Army Group Center (commanded by Field Marshal von Bock) numbered 820,000 men, 1,800 tanks, 14,300 guns and mortars, and 1,680 combat aircraft. The idea of ​​the commander of Army Group Center, advancing in the eastern strategic direction, was to inflict two converging attacks on the flanks of Soviet troops in Belarus in the general direction of Minsk with tank groupings, to encircle the main forces of the Western Special Military District (from June 22 - the Western front) and destroy them with field armies. In the future, the German command planned to move mobile troops to the Smolensk region to prevent the approach of strategic reserves and their occupation of defenses at a new line.

The Hitlerite command hoped that by delivering a surprise strike with concentrated masses of tanks, infantry and aviation, it would be possible to stun the Soviet troops, crush the defenses and achieve decisive strategic success in the early days of the war. The command of Army Group Center concentrated the bulk of troops and military equipment in the first operational echelon, which included 28 divisions, including 22 infantry, 4 tank, 1 cavalry, 1 security. A high operational density of troops was created in the areas of the defense breakthrough (the average operational density was about 10 km per division, and in the direction of the main attack - up to 5-6 km). This allowed the enemy to achieve significant superiority in manpower and equipment over the Soviet troops in the direction of the main attack. The superiority in manpower was 6.5 times, in the number of tanks - 1.8 times, in the number of guns and mortars - 3.3 times.

The attack of this armada was taken over by the troops of the Western Special Military District located in the border zone. Soviet border guards were the first to enter the battle with the advanced units of the enemy.

The Brest Fortress was a whole complex of defensive structures. The central one is the Citadel - a pentagonal closed two-storey defensive barracks with a perimeter of 1.8 km, with walls almost two meters thick, with loopholes, embrasures, casemates. The central fortification is located on an island formed by the Bug and two branches of the Mukhavets. Three artificial islands formed by Mukhavets and moats are connected with this island by bridges, on which there were Terespolsky fortification with the Terespolsky gates and a bridge across the Western Bug, Volynskoye - with the Kholmsky gate and a drawbridge across Mukhavets, Kobrinskoye - with Brest and Brigitsky gates and bridges across Mukhavets ...

Defenders of the Brest Fortress. Soldiers of the 44th Infantry Regiment of the 42nd Infantry Division. 1941 year. Photo from the archive of BelTA

On the day of the German attack on the Soviet Union, 7 rifle battalions and 1 reconnaissance battalion, 2 artillery divisions, some special divisions of rifle regiments and corps units were deployed in the Brest Fortress; 4th Army, units of the 17th Red Banner Brest border detachment, the 33rd separate engineering regiment, part of the 132nd battalion of the NKVD troops, unit headquarters (the headquarters of the divisions and the 28th rifle corps were located in Brest). The units were not deployed in a militant manner and did not occupy positions on the border lines. Some units or their subdivisions were in camps, on training grounds, on the construction of a fortified area. By the time of the attack, there were from 7 to 8 thousand Soviet soldiers in the fortress, and 300 families of military personnel also lived here.

From the first minutes of the war, Brest and the fortress were subjected to massive air raids and artillery fire. The German 45th Infantry Division (about 17 thousand soldiers and officers) stormed the Brest Fortress in cooperation with the 31st and 34th Infantry Divisions of the 12th Army Corps of the 4th German Army, as well as 2 tank divisions of the 2nd Panzer Guderian's group, with the active support of aviation and reinforcement units armed with heavy artillery systems. The enemy's goal was, using the surprise of the attack, to capture the Citadel and force the Soviet garrison to surrender.

Before the start of the assault, the enemy conducted a hurricane targeted shelling of the fortress for half an hour, moving a barrage of artillery fire every 4 minutes 100 m deep into the fortress. Next came the enemy's shock assault groups, which, according to the plans of the German command, were supposed to capture the fortifications by 12 noon on June 22. As a result of shelling and fires, most of the warehouses and material part, many other objects were destroyed or destroyed, the water supply ceased to function, communication was interrupted. A significant part of the soldiers and commanders was incapacitated, the garrison of the fortress was dismembered into separate groups.

In the first minutes of the war, border guards at the Terespol fortification, Red Army men and cadets of regimental schools of the 84th and 125th rifle regiments located at the border, on the Volyn and Kobrin fortifications entered into battle with the enemy. Their stubborn resistance allowed about half of the personnel to leave the fortress on the morning of June 22, withdraw several guns and light tanks to the areas where their units were concentrated, and evacuate the first wounded. 3.5-4 thousand Soviet soldiers remained in the fortress. The enemy had an almost 10-fold superiority in forces.

The Germans at the Terespol Gate of the Brest Fortress. June 1941. Photo from the archive of BelTA

On the first day of the fighting, by 9 o'clock in the morning, the fortress was surrounded. The advance units of the 45th German division tried to capture the fortress on the move. Through the bridge at the Terespol Gate, enemy assault groups broke through into the Citadel, seized the regimental club building dominating over other buildings (the former church), where artillery fire spotters immediately settled. At the same time, the enemy launched an offensive in the direction of the Kholmsk and Brest gates, hoping to link up there with groups advancing from the Volyn and Kobrin fortifications. This plan was thwarted. At the Kholmsk Gate, the soldiers of the 3rd battalion and the headquarters units of the 84th rifle regiment entered the battle with the enemy, at Brestskiye, the soldiers of the 455th rifle regiment, the 37th separate communications battalion, and the 33rd separate engineering regiment went into a counterattack. The enemy was crushed and overturned by bayonet attacks.

The retreating Hitlerites were met with dense fire by Soviet soldiers at the Terespol Gate, which by this time had been recaptured from the enemy. Here the border guards of the 9th frontier post and the headquarters units of the 3rd frontier commandant's office - the 132nd NKVD battalion, the soldiers of the 333rd and 44th rifle regiments, and the 31st separate autobatalion - were entrenched here. They held the bridge across the Western Bug under targeted rifle and machine-gun fire, and prevented the enemy from establishing a pontoon crossing over the river to the Kobrin fortification. Only a few of the German submachine gunners who broke into the Citadel managed to hide in the club building and the adjacent building of the command staff canteen. The enemy here was destroyed on the second day. Subsequently, these buildings have repeatedly passed from hand to hand.

Almost simultaneously, fierce battles unfolded throughout the fortress. From the very beginning, they acquired the character of the defense of its individual fortifications without a single headquarters and command, without communication and almost without interaction between the defenders of different fortifications. The defenders were led by commanders and political workers, in some cases - ordinary soldiers who took over command. In the shortest possible time, they rallied their forces and organized a rebuff to the German fascist invaders.

By the evening of June 22, the enemy entrenched in a part of the defensive barracks between the Kholmsky and Terespolsky gates (later used it as a bridgehead in the Citadel), captured several sections of the barracks at the Brest gate. However, the enemy's calculation of surprise was not justified; defensive battles, counterattacks, Soviet soldiers fettered the enemy's forces, inflicting heavy losses on him.

Late in the evening, the German command decided to withdraw its infantry from the fortifications, to create a blockade line behind the outer ramparts, so that on the morning of June 23, again, with shelling and bombing, to begin an assault on the fortress. The battles in the fortress took on a fierce, protracted character, which the enemy did not expect. On the territory of each fortress, the German fascist invaders met stubborn heroic resistance from Soviet soldiers.

On the territory of the Terespol border fortification, the defense was held by the warriors of the courses of drivers of the Belarusian Border District under the command of the head of the courses, Senior Lieutenant F.M. Melnikov and the teacher of courses, Lieutenant Zhdanov, the transport company of the 17th border detachment, led by the commander, Senior Lieutenant A.S. Cherny, together with the soldiers cavalry courses, a sapper platoon, reinforced detachments of the 9th frontier post, a vetzaret, training camp. They managed to clear most of the territory of the fortification from the enemy that had broken through, but due to a lack of ammunition and large losses in personnel, they could not keep it. On the night of June 25, the remnants of the groups of Melnikov, who died in the battles, and Cherny crossed the Western Bug and joined the defenders of the Citadel and the Kobrin fortification.

At the beginning of hostilities, hospitals of the 4th Army and 28th Rifle Corps, the 95th Medical Battalion of the 6th Rifle Division were located on the Volyn fortification, there was a small part of the regimental school of junior commanders of the 84th Rifle Regiment, detachments of the 9th Rifle Regiment. 1st frontier post. Within the hospital, the defense was organized by the battalion commissar N.S. Bogateev, the 2nd rank military doctor S.S. Babkin (both died). The German submachine gunners who burst into the hospital buildings brutally dealt with the sick and wounded. The defense of the Volyn fortification is full of examples of the dedication of soldiers and medical personnel who fought to the end in the ruins of buildings. Covering the wounded, nurses V.P. Horetskaya and E.I. Rovnyagina were killed. Capturing the sick, wounded, medical personnel, children, on June 23, the Nazis used them as a human barrier, driving machine gunners ahead of the attacking Kholmsk Gate. "Shoot, don't feel sorry for us!" shouted the Soviet patriots. By the end of the week, the focal defense on the fortification faded. Some fighters joined the ranks of the Citadel's defenders, few managed to break out of the enemy ring.

The course of the defense required the unification of all the forces of the defenders of the fortress. On June 24, a meeting of commanders and political workers was held in the Citadel, where the issue of creating a consolidated combat group, the formation of subunits from soldiers of different units, and the approval of their commanders who were allocated in the course of hostilities were decided. Order No. 1 was issued, according to which the command of the group was entrusted to Captain Zubachev, regimental commissar Fomin was appointed his deputy. In practice, they were able to lead the defense only in the Citadel. Although the command of the combined group did not manage to unite the leadership of the battles throughout the fortress, the headquarters played an important role in intensifying the hostilities.

Germans in the Brest Fortress. 1941 year. Photo from the archive of BelTA

By decision of the command of the consolidated group, attempts were made to break through the encirclement. On June 26, a 120-man detachment headed by Lieutenant Vinogradov went to break through. Thirteen soldiers managed to break through the eastern line of the fortress, but they were captured by the enemy. Other attempts at a massive breakthrough from the besieged fortress were also unsuccessful; only a few small groups were able to break through. The remaining small garrison of Soviet troops continued to fight with extraordinary tenacity and tenacity.

The Nazis methodically attacked the fortress for a whole week. Soviet soldiers had to repulse 6-8 attacks a day. There were women and children next to the fighters. They helped the wounded, brought cartridges, took part in hostilities. The Nazis set in motion tanks, flamethrowers, gases, set fire to and rolled barrels with a combustible mixture from the outer shafts.

Being completely surrounded, without water and food, with an acute shortage of ammunition and medicine, the garrison fought bravely against the enemy. In the first 9 days of fighting alone, the defenders of the fortress disabled about 1.5 thousand enemy soldiers and officers. By the end of June, the enemy captured most of the fortress, on June 29 and 30, the Nazis undertook a continuous two-day assault on the fortress using powerful aerial bombs. On June 29, Andrei Mitrofanovich Kizhevatov was killed while covering a breakout group with several fighters. In the Citadel on June 30, the Nazis seized the seriously wounded and shell-shocked captain Zubachev and the regimental commissar Fomin, whom the Nazis shot near the Kholmsky Gate. On June 30, after a long shelling and bombing, which ended in a fierce attack, the Nazis captured a large part of the structures of the Eastern Fort and captured the wounded.

As a result of bloody battles and losses incurred, the defense of the fortress disintegrated into a number of isolated centers of resistance. Until July 12, a small group of fighters headed by Pyotr Mikhailovich Gavrilov continued to fight in the Eastern Fort, until he, seriously wounded, together with the secretary of the Komsomol bureau of the 98th separate anti-tank artillery division, deputy political instructor G.D. Derevyanko, were captured on July 23 ...

But even later on the 20th of July, Soviet soldiers continued to fight in the fortress. The last days of the struggle are covered with legends. These days include the inscriptions left on the walls of the fortress by its defenders: "We will die, but we will not leave the fortress", "I am dying, but I do not surrender. Farewell, Motherland. 20.07.41." None of the banners of the military units that fought in the fortress went to the enemy.

Inscriptions on the walls of the Brest Fortress. Photo from the archive of BelTA

The enemy was forced to note the fortitude and heroism of the defenders of the fortress. In July, the commander of the 45th German Infantry Division, General Schlipper, in his "Report on the Occupation of Brest-Litovsk" reported: "The Russians in Brest-Litovsk fought exceptionally stubborn and persistent. They showed excellent infantry training and proved remarkable will to resist."

The defenders of the fortress - soldiers of more than 30 nationalities of the USSR - to the end fulfilled their duty to the Motherland, performed one of the greatest feats of the Soviet people in the history of the Great Patriotic War. The exceptional heroism of the defenders of the fortress was highly appreciated. The title of Hero of the Soviet Union was awarded to Major Gavrilov and Lieutenant Kizhevatov. About 200 participants in the defense were awarded orders and medals.