Page 306 - The Chief Culprit
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The War Has Begun
Only now did we realize how well the Russians had been prepared for war.
—A H, , O ,
uring April, May, and the first half of June 1941, German reconnaissance planes
flew “by mistake” over the western regions of the Soviet Union. Stalin ordered not
Dto shoot them down. At the same time, Soviet planes, also “by mistake,” flew over
territory occupied by German troops.
Both regular pilots and commanders were flying “by mistake” over German territory.
Commander of the 43rd Air Force Fighter Division of the Western special military district,
Major General G. N. Zakharov, remembered flying in the sky and looking at German troops:
“An impression formed that some sort of movement was originating deep within the territo-
ries, which was halted only at the edges of the border, and was held by it, as if by an invisible
barrier, ready to flow over the edge at any moment.” e German pilots flying then over
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Soviet territory viewed the same picture.
e predicament of General M. F. Lukin demonstrates the full tragedy of the situation.
As an army commander, he had already fought in Ukraine in the vicinity of Shepetovka,
while the staff of his army still remained in the Trans-Baikal. e trains carrying his army
stretched across thousands of kilometers. e worst situation was when a train had to stop in
the middle of the fields instead of at a station. A tank battalion is a formidable force, but in
a train it is completely defenseless. If the war found a train carrying heavy armor in a place
where there were no facilities for unloading, the train either had to be destroyed or aban-
doned. ose divisions that didn’t advance to the border in trains weren’t in a better position.
A division marching in columns was a great target for air force raids. e entire Red Army
presented one great target.
In his memoirs, the German pilot Hans-Ulrich Rudel described the beginning of the
war against the Soviet Union. He flew a Ju-87 and completed 2,430 battle missions.
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