Page 309 - The Chief Culprit

254 y e Chief Culprit

with the goal of landing assault troops on the shores. At the same time, the Danube military
flotilla began assault operations in the Danube river delta.
e garrison of the Soviet naval base Hanko, located on Finnish territory, did not
switch to a defensive regime after the start of hostilities, but instead began intensive assault
operations, taking over nineteen Finnish islands in the course of several days. 8
On June 25, despite losses suffered by Soviet air forces during the first days of the
war, airplanes of the Northern Front carried out a surprise bombing raid. e staff of the
Northern Front reported on that morning: “ e air force of the front and of the armies
started on 6:20  to carry out, by bomber formations, the task of exterminating the enemy’s
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air force on his airfields.” e enemy’s name is spelled out in the report which the staff issued
later that same day: “Bombed were all known airfields of the southern part of Finland.” e
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Germans, who happened to have invaded the USSR three days before, are not mentioned in
the reports. is means that the USSR, without declaring war and in violation of the peace
treaty it signed with Finland just a year earlier, committed an unprovoked act of aggression
against its neighbor. Would somebody explain why this crime against peace was not a part of
the Nurnberg indictments?
On June 23, the 1st Long-range Bomber Aviation Corps carried out a massive at-
tack against military targets in Koenigsberg and Danzig. is was no improvisation. On the
morning of June 22, at 6:44 , the Soviet long-range bomber air force received orders to
act according to the plans. For several days, it tried to carry out these orders. On June 26,
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1941, the 4th Long-Range Bomber Aviation Corps began to bomb the Ploieşti oil fields in
Romania. After just a few days of raids, the amount of oil obtained in Romania was reduced
almost in half. Even when the Soviet air force sustained unimaginable losses at its bases, it
had managed to wreak huge damage on the Romanian oil industry. Under any other circum-
stances, the Soviet air force would have been much more dangerous and could have fully
paralyzed the entire German military, industrial, and transportation capacities through its
actions against the oil-producing regions. Hitler understood the threat all too well, and saw
an invasion of the USSR as his only possible defense. Of course, even that did not save him.
On June 22, 1941, the 41st Rifle Division of the 6th Rifle Corps of the 6th Army, without
waiting to hear orders from higher commanders, acted according to prewar plans and crossed
the state border in the Rava-Russkaya region. e 102nd Rifle Regiment of this division
crossed the border on a front line of eight kilometers and penetrated four to six kilometers into
enemy territory. In the morning of June 22, 1941, the commander of the Northwestern Front,
Colonel General F. I. Kuznetsov, without awaiting orders from Moscow, issued an order to his
troops to attack Tilzit in Eastern Prussia. For the Northwestern Front’s staff, for the command-
ers of the armies and their staffs, this decision was not at all surprising: an attack on Tilzit had
been worked out in training exercises just days earlier and “was very familiar to the formations
commanders and their staffs.” Colonel General Kuznetsov simply put the prewar plans into
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action. On the evening of that same day, the Soviet high command, not yet knowing about
General Kuznetsov’s actions, ordered him to do exactly what he had already begun doing: to
attack Tilzit in Eastern Prussia.
e High Command also ordered the neighboring Western Front to carry out a power-
ful attack on the Polish city of Suvalki. is was no surprise to the Western Front commander
General D. G. Pavlov. He knew the objectives of his front long before the directives from
Moscow arrived, and had already issued the orders to advance on Suvalki. However, because