These are some photos of those whom the Russians should be thankful to for the year of 1945 and the peace time they’re living in right now.
Major Ludmila M. Pavlichenko.
‘Gentlemen, I’m 25 and I’ve destroyed 309 German soldiers. Don’t you think, gentlemen, that you’ve been hiding behind my back for too long?’ Chicago, 1942.
Senior Lieutenant Konstantin F. Olshansky.
Since March, 26th till March 28th, 1944, he had been the leader of a landing force which consisted of 68 Russian soldiers. Being encircled, they repulsed 18 attacks, destroying 2 tanks of the enemy and killing over 700 German officers.
Capitan Zinovy G. Kolobanov.
On August 19th, 1941 near the city of Krasnogvardeysk, a tank company under his command, destroyed 43 German tanks; 22 of them were destroyed by his own crew.
Major Petr M. Gavrilov.
According to some German soldiers, this man, being hardly alive, began fighting against them by himself, threw grenades and fired a gun, killing and wounding several German officers. 23 July 1941
Capitan of the Guard Vasily G. Zaytsev.
Since November, 10th till December 17th, 1942, in the battle for Stalingrad he killed 225 German soldiers, including 11 snipers.
Senior Sergeant Rosa E. Shanina.
‘I know that I’ve done little for my country yet. Not more than every Soviet person has to do. Today I’m ready to have a hand-to-hand fight. There’s no fear. I’m ready to die for my Homeland’. January 16th, 1945.
Major Natalia F. Meklin.
She performed 980 flights, bombing the enemy’s important objects, manpower, and military equipment.
Capitan Konstantin I. Nedorubov.
He was a Don Cossack, a veteran of WWI, and a veteran of the Civil War. When WWII began, he was 52 but it didn’t stop him from killing 70 German officers in a battle for Maratuki village in 1942.
Capitan Aleksandr M. Gusev.
‘Near the geodetic station we pulled the German flag out and installed the Russian banner’. Elbrus. February 17th, 1943.
Secret Service Man and Partisan Nikolay I. Kuznetsov.
He’d been working in Germany since 1942 and provided Moscow with important information, including information concerning German rocket missiles; killed 11 high-ranking German officers.
Lieutenant of the Guard Ivan T. Lubushkin.
On October 6th, 1941, he set five German tanks on fire. He wrote: “For the first time we saw how much superior Russian tanks T-34 are.”
Capitan of the Guard Maria I. Dolina.
She performed 72 successful flights, dropping 51 tons of bombs. In 1944 her well-aimed bombing attack destroyed the enemy’s echelon with ammunition; participated in liberation of the city of Borisov.
Major of the Guard Aleksey P. Maresyev.
On April 4th, 1942 he was wounded in an air fight and tried to reach the Russian troops for 18 days. As a result of gangrene he lost both legs. In 1943 he returned to the army; performed 86 flights, destroying 11 German aircrafts (4 planes before the amputation and 7 after it).
Soldier Aleksandr M. Matrosov.
In a fight near Chernushka Village, with his body he blocked the gun-port of the enemy’s defence post, thus helping his comrades get over it.
Colonel of the Guard Evdokia N. Zavaliy.
She was the only woman commander of the naval infantry platoon. She went to the front at 17; took part in liberation of Novorossiysk and Sevastopol. Together with her platoon she captured a bunker and took a German General prisoner. Germans often called her ‘Frau Black Death’.
Lieutenant Colonel Boris F. Safonov.
He was the best Soviet airforce pilot of 1941-1942. He was the first to become Hero of the Soviet Union twice; destroyed 33 German aircrafts and died on May 30th, 1942.
Priest and Partisan Fedor A. Puzanov.
He was a veteran of WWI and later became a rector. During WWII he helped partisans with food and clothes and in 1944 prevented Germans from taking 300 fellow villagers prisoner.
Junior Sergeant Victor V. Zavalin.
In 1944, the detachment under his command was the first to cross the Dnieper, and caused great losses to the enemy, repulsing 15 attacks. On a Victory day he was in Vienna. After capitulation of Nazi Germany he took part in crushing of Kwantung Army. Participated in liberation of Mukden and port Arthur.
Corporal Maria T. Shalneva.
The photo of this traffic-controller girl from a remote Siberian village was taken on May 2nd, 1945 and became world famous.
Sergeant Major Ekaterina I. Mikhaylova (Demina).
She went to the front at the age of 15 by adding two years to her real age; participated in battles in the Crimea and the Caucasus, in Vienna and Yugoslavia. In 1944 she rendered medical help to 17 wounded soldiers, blew up the enemy’s defensive installation with grenades, and killed over 10 German officers.
If Stalin’s guys said they did I’m sure it must be true.
War. War Never Changes …
Some of these heroes may actually killed 700 German officers. But I think that many (if not on the frontline of war) ended in a Soviet labor camps.
Salut to them!
BTW, I wonder how Puzanov was treated after war.
me have no doubt soviet statistics are best in the world, so i summarized the german german losses done by this heroes, – at least – 533 soldiers; 796 officers, 48 tanks and 44 aircrafts, most of them during single day. HOW IMPRESSING.
Me wonder how German forces afforded to survive till autumn’41 with this opponents.
And this social support for Stalin, again so impressing – priests and cossacks are widely know for supporting bolsheviks.
How did the Germans survive?
A) Hitler kept throwing bodies at the Russians.
B)Hitler did not allow them to retreat. But, unlike the Russians, Hitler didn’t have a gun at their backs, they just obeyed. Some didn’t, some of those suffered by jail, or concentration camps, some didn’t suffer at all. It all depended on Hitlers mood at the time, and how well he liked you.
And C) It’s amazing what you can do when your life is on the line. At the end of the Stalingrad battle, some of those Germans looked like the walking dead, like they had been in the same camps the Jews were in.
Good propaganda is the best way to everything but war is war
how can be that a kossack is on the side of the reds and not loyal to the Car? that is strange
salut!!!
Eternal Memory of the Heroes
Where is Lydia Litvyak?
“Litvyak displayed a rebellious and romantic character” a bit against Soviet ideals at time and “Borisenko descended to see if he could find her. No parachute was seen, and no explosion, yet she never returned from the mission. Litvyak was 21 years old. Soviet authorities suspected that she might have been captured, a possibility that prevented them from awarding her the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.”
conflicting data as if she did nor did not receive a HSU.
Some of the posted comments are not true a very large number of Cossacks sided with the Germans when given the chance.Also the Soviets that got rewarded the HSU but later got sent to Gulags they where removed from public knowledge though this did not happen to many such things mainly happened to troops that had been captured.
Nikolay I. Kuznetsov was a member of SMERSH (why he is shown in a German uniform)when he was assigned to kill and enemy agent he would always tell the person that they had been given a death sentence and he was the one assigned to carry it out.
Boris F. Safonov the pilot his score was no small feat at that time period the Luftwaffe was the best trained and best equipped air force in the world and the Soviet Air Force was one of the most poorly trained and equipped and was in total disarray for most of 1941,42.
I can see the purpose in high level awards like the Gold Star,Victoria Cross,Medal of Honor but at the same time these are awards written by men and many times in many wars there are people that do great deeds far beyond the call of duty but they never receive an award do not forget to think about those people as well I am sure that there are plenty of people that are in this category from the Soviet Army.
Couldn’t agree more with your last statement. Zhukov had more to do with victory than Stalin. But guess what happened to him. Lucky not to be executed like Tuchachevsky.
these people are heroes that is true but this cossack stuf is wird i have heared about that what you writed down here but i have readed that the cossak and the leaders of the cossaks in all the life time period is true to Car
What is all this talk of cossacks being loyal to a “Car”? WTH is that?
I think he meant Czar, or Tsar.
Aah. For a moment there I was worried that someone who had probably never even seen a real Cossack, had magically become an expert on everything about them Enough to know exactly with whom their allegiances lay. Be it a monarch executed 29 years ago.
Veterans’ Day is tomorrow here in the USA, but we should never forget the service and sacrifice of these Soviet veterans.
My great-grandfather was a tank man, a driver. When the war started he was in a T-26. As the germans advanced and many of the second-class units were sacrificed to “trade space for time”, his unit was ordered to stand and fight outside Belgorod. Knowing that his T26′s had little chance against the Panzers without almost any help, the regiment commander ordered for the T-26′s to be dug in and form static defences, with only the turret manned by volunteers. As it turned out all of these men went down fighting. Some eventually gave up when their main gun ran out of ammunition. They had bought crucial time, two whole days, in which the remaining men and an unknown number of civilians were able to escape east. Each one of those volunteers should have been given first class honours. But no. Only the Colonel commanding the regiment was given anything other than the normal war medal.
Oh well. Guess this is all spilled milk. No use crying over it.
Medals are a keepsake and an honor they missed out on, but keeping the memory alive of what those men did is what’s really important today.
During the Cold War, Western Media hid the enormous courage and determination of these people. People forget that without their staggering sacrifice, the Nazi Genocidal program would have been carried out in much bigger, unimaginable proportions. Don’t forget them.
This guy deserves recognition! An undecorated hero…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Pechersky
We all won that war because of Russians. Don’t you dare to compare American conrtibution to Victory with Russian contribution. Russian heroes deserved fame more than anyone.
Oh please no one nation deserves all the credit for winning WWII. That’s completely asinine. It was the collective assault on Germany that brought the war to a close in 4 short years. Russians would have had a much tougher go of it if not for the allies pounding the crap out of Germany from the other side. Be glad they did and it was only a 4 year war because of it.
Yes but remember that the Soviets killed between 75% and 90% of German soldiers. Apparently Germany used ~85% of its military resources fighting the Soviets.
Assuming your percentages are right for the moment, i still have to wonder what percentage of those Germans died in Soviet POW camps? From what i recall German POW death rates were much higher in Soviet POW camps compared to the other allies, and the Soviets didn’t seem to care for taking POWs in the first place. Better if they are dead Germans and that’s that. So that could be a big reason for the disparity on numbers killed by the Soviets vs. other Allies. Just sayin’.
Sure, but where would USSR be without Land&Lease?
What about Lend Lease? from ’41 to ’45 the U.S. supplied about 11 billion dollars of wartime aid to the USSR to keep them well equipped in the fight against the Nazis. Stalin never fully acknowledged the extent of the aid to the Soviet people, so it’s not clear to me whether those of the former Soviet Union realize the extent of the support they received. Even so at the 1945 Yalta Conference Stalin stated “Lend-Lease is one of Franklin Roosevelt’s most remarkable and vital achievements in the formation of the anti-Hitler alliance.”
BTW the reason Stalin stated that is because , that 11 billion worth of equipment was just the aid to the USSR. The U.S. Lend Lease program totaled 50 billion dollars (in 1940s dollars). 11 bil to USSR, 31.4 bil to the Brits, 3.2 bil to France, and 1.6 bil to China.
That said there’s no doubt that the USSR paid the highest price in war dead of any nation. It’s truly tragic on a massive scale. Everyone of them should be remembered for their contribution.
How come Zavelin looks black?
Lend-lease?! Great!
did you know it was NOT free of charge for USSR, and later US asked back that money. Buisness, nothing more)))
If the’re it exist anything like a pacific, civilized world today, it’s because these people, and 25 millions citizen of Soviet Union gave their lives to stop the most monstrous and insane regime ever. Not that I love Stalin by any mean (he was a tyrant, he made a lot of terrible mistakes, he got credits for victories that should be credited to a lot of different people), but the reality is that the West has never given Russia and the Russian people enough credit for winning the WWII for us (I’m aware there was a war into the Pacific – but if Japan surrendered it’s also because of Soviet stunning win in Manchuria). However, I’m afraid that 50 years of propaganda, and the collapse of Russia economy in the 90 has made most of the west simply comfortable in what are a bunch of lies. From my point of view, I’m grateful to the people featured in these pages, and grateful to those who posted this.