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the needed German phrase, simply point to the corresponding lines in the book and the
Germans can read them themselves. e phrases are very interesting. For example: “Where is
the water? Is it drinkable? Drink it first yourself.” Imagine the situation: the Soviet soldiers are
fighting, defending their motherland, enter a Russian village, take out the phrase book from
their packs and read syllable by syllable: “Trinken Sie zuerst man selbst!” But they would be
taken for Germans in Russia! Here is another example: “What is this station called? Stop the
broadcast, or I will shoot you! Bring the conductor! Where is the fuel? Where is the garage?
Gather and bring here [so many] horses [farm animals], we will pay!” To communicate with
the local populations, it is not a bad idea to know phrases such as: “Where are the German
soldiers hiding? Where is the burghermeister? Is there an observation point on the steeple?”
But, there was not one burghermeister or steeple in the Soviet Union. Another very impor-
tant question: “Where are the stores?” e most important phrases are the following: “You
do not need to be afraid! e Red Army will come soon!”
A former Soviet diplomat, Nikolai Berezhkov, who accompanied Molotov to Berlin
in 1940, wrote in his memoirs With a Diplomatic Mission in Berlin that a German printing
press worker once brought to the Soviet embassy a German-Russian phrase book of the same
kind. For the Soviet embassy, the book was solid proof that the German army was preparing
to invade the USSR. But in the USSR they were printing the same exact phrase books.
Soviet soldiers and officers were preparing for a victorious march on Berlin, but the war
against Germany in 1941 didn’t run according to plan. As a result, when Soviet commanders
were captured, the Germans found quite interesting maps and curious orders in their bags.
ousands of soldiers had Russian-German and Russian-Romanian phrase books. Many sim-
ply did not think of the necessity to get rid of this compromising evidence.
e commander of the 5th Battery of the 14th Howitzer Regiment of the 14th Tank
Division of the 7th Mechanized Corps, Yakov Iosifovich Dzhugashvili, son of Stalin, was
no exception. He was taken prisoner, but at first he was not recognized. e senior lieuten-
ant was betrayed by his subordinates. Stalin’s son was searched and questioned. A let-
ter was found in his pockets, from a certain junior lieutenant in the reserves named Victor:
“I am at the training camps, I would like to be home by fall, but the planned walk to Berlin
might hinder this.” e letter is dated June 11, 1941. e contents of this letter were reported
to Hitler personally; he mentioned it on May 18, 1942. In June 1941, German intelligence
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officers showed the letter to Yakov Dzhugashvili and asked him to clarify the statement about
the “planned walk to Berlin.” e questioning protocol recorded Stalin’s son’s reaction. He
read the letter and quietly muttered: “Damn it!”
During questioning, Stalin’s son was asked why the Soviet artillery, which had the best
cannon and howitzers in the world, and in incredible numbers, fired so poorly. Stalin’s son
answered: “ e maps let the Red Army down, because the war, contrary to expectations,
unfolded to the east of the state border.” Stalin’s son told the truth. In 1941, the Red Army
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fought without maps. ere simply weren’t any. But the artillery couldn’t fire without maps.
Direct aiming and firing was just a small fraction of the work done by artillery in war. Most
of the time artillery fired beyond the horizon.
“It turned out that in Soviet Russia a map-making industry was created that surpassed
everything that had ever been done before in its size, organization, volume, and quality of
work,” concluded the Germans about the Soviet topographic services. How do we reconcile
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the best map-making industry in the world with the complete absence of maps? Lieutenant