The feat of the people in the Great Patriotic War is quite difficult to overestimate. There is no longer such a massive self-sacrifice as the Soviet people showed in history known to the world.
Losses of the Soviet people
At present, the question of how many people from the Soviet Union perished in the confrontation with Germany and its many allies during the Second World War has already been studied in sufficient detail. Now we are talking about about 26.6 million people.
It is worth noting that not all of these people were soldiers. Most of them are civilians who had to be in the occupied territory. The same figure also included those losses that occurred as a result of increased mortality in the rest of the USSR during the war.
Combat feat of the Soviet people
The successes of the USSR were paid for by the blood of soldiers of the Red Army. The number of soldiers killed during the Great Patriotic War is approximately 7 million people. This figure also includes those losses that arose as a result of illnesses, as well as various kinds of incidents. The executed soldiers (for desertion and so on) are also included here.
The combat feat of the people in the Great Patriotic War can also be estimated by the number of people who received the title of Heroes of the Soviet Union. Among them, most of all Russians and Ukrainians. Moreover, there are both men and women - heroes of the war. This list consists of as many as 11506 surnames. Many received this title posthumously, having fulfilled their duty. Among them there are also pioneers - heroes of the Great Patriotic War, in total there were 4 of them:
- Leonid Golikov;
- Marat Kazei;
- Valentina Kotik;
- Zinaida Portnova.
All these pioneers, heroes of the Great Patriotic War, except Leonid Golikov, received this highest rank after the victory, when it became possible to summarize the activities of not only paramilitary units, but also underground.
Civil casualties
The Great Patriotic War differs from the vast majority of other major conflicts in that the bulk of the victims in it was civil. That is, more civilians died than soldiers. If the number of military casualties is about 7,000,000, and the total losses are 26,600,000, then the number of civilians killed reaches almost 20 million.
The feat of the people in the Great Patriotic War is also characterized by the fact that the civilian population took a direct part in it. Moreover, it consisted of:
- partisan activities in the occupied territory;
- fortifications on the approaching front line during the advance of the Wehrmacht army;
- continuous shock labor activity inland.
The significance of the victory of the Soviet people
At present, they are trying to minimize the feat of the people in the Great Patriotic War. Such a process is largely hindered by the abundance of surviving documents confirming its grandiose scale. Now the feat of the people in the Great Patriotic War has an important social, ideological and educational value.
As for the social sphere, everything is very simple here. If there were no victory over fascism, then the world for billions of people would be completely different. The Wehrmacht had ambitious plans for the destruction of the unworthy, in their opinion, peoples and the settlement of the liberated territory with "true Aryans."
The ideological significance of the victory lies in the fact that for many decades it rallied the peoples that were part of the Soviet Union, making the country strong and able to implement almost any project.
The educational moment is determined by the fact that the younger generation still takes with interest the information about the victory in the Great Patriotic War of their grandfathers and great-grandfathers. Today, every student from textbooks learns about how significant was the feat of the people. Participants of the Second World War are still invited to educational institutions in order to firsthand to convey to the representatives of the younger generations what exactly the real sons and daughters of the Fatherland should do in difficult situations for him.
Labor feat
It is wrong to consider that the victory in the most bloody war was obtained purely on the fronts of battles. The fact is that without the heroic efforts of those who worked for the military machine of the Soviet Union deep in the rear of the country, there could be no talk of any triumph of the Red Army. By the end of 1942, men, women, old people and children, working for wear and tear, were able to establish the production of military equipment in an amount 2 times higher than the German industry. And this despite the fact that we lost 3-4 times in steel production.
The labor feat of the people in the Great Patriotic War is on a par with the military successes of the Red Army for the reason that the main military production was initially located in the western territory, which was captured in the very first months of the conflict. Of course, they managed to evacuate something east, but not all, and before releasing equipment that could withstand the German military machine, it was necessary to properly prepare the workers.
Partisan Underground Contribution
Partisan movement was especially widespread in the territory of modern Belarus, Ukraine and Russia. By the end of 1941, the number of troops operating in the rear of the invaders was about 2 thousand. At the same time, the backbone of the partisan movement was made up of soldiers of the Red Army, who were able to break out of the numerous "boilers" formed in the first months of the confrontation. Subsequently, local residents, including women and children, joined the ranks of the partisans.
The contribution of the partisan underground to the overall victory is difficult to overestimate. The fact is that thanks to him, the Wehrmacht lost up to a million of its soldiers (in total, Germany lost about 4.7 million troops). In addition to this, it was disabled:
- about 4000 units of armored vehicles;
- 65,000 cars;
- 58 armored trains;
- 110,000 wagons and platforms.
As a result, the Wehrmacht army simply did not have time to transfer a huge amount of equipment and soldiers to the front. They were destroyed in the occupied territory.
The mass partisan movement is indirectly indicated by the fact that in 1943 the Soviet authorities equated its participants with the soldiers of the Red Army.