The treacherous offensive of the Nazi invaders began in the early morning of June 22, 1941, and on June 20 the last graduation parties took place in the capital. Before lunch, all four-plus million inhabitants and guests of the capital of the USSR did not even suspect that the most bloody war in history had begun at night.
Start of war
The first few months, Soviet citizens believed in slogans about a quick victory over the aggressor, but it soon became clear that hostilities would drag on for a long time. The occupied territory was expanding, and citizens realized that liberation depended not only on the authorities, but also on themselves.
Millions of Soviet citizens were to be mobilized, and large-scale training in medical and military affairs began in the rear. Many young men, who did not even have time to finish school, rushed to the front, and girls who did not reach adulthood hid their return in order to go to the vanguard of hostilities by nurses. Komsomol members - heroes of World War II also distinguished themselves.
Alexander Matrosov
From the biography of the hero-Komsomol member Alexander Matrosov, two facts are precisely known: the date of his birth, as well as the place of death. Alexander was born on February 5, 1924 in Yekaterinoslav (Dnepropetrovsk, and now the Dnieper), and died on February 27, 1943 near the village of Chernushki (now the territory of the Pskov Region) at the age of nineteen.
According to one version, the real hero-Komsomol member Matrosov was called Shakiryan Yunusovich Mukhamedyanov, and the place of birth was a deep village in the Bashkir Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. But he called himself Matrosov. A boy was brought up in orphanages and a labor colony. After school, he worked there as an assistant.
After the outbreak of hostilities, Sailors requested to send him to war. In September 1942 he was drafted into the army, and the next year he went to the Kalinin Front.
According to the common version, the battalion of Matrosov - a Komsomol member, a war hero - was ordered to attack the stronghold near the village of Chernushki. Soviet soldiers came under enemy fire, attempts to suppress it were unsuccessful.
In the direction of one of the surviving bunkers, Peter Ogurtsov and Alexander Matrosov crawled. On the approaches Peter was badly wounded, then Alexander decided to end the operation on his own. From the flank, he threw two grenades. Sailors covered the embrasure with his body. So, at the cost of his own life, the Komsomol hero contributed to the fulfillment of the combat mission.
Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya
The name of the Komsomol hero Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya in the USSR became a symbol of the struggle against fascism. The country learned about the heroism of a young partisan from the story "Tanya" by war correspondent Peter Lidov, which was published in the newspaper "Pravda" in January 1942. There they talked about a partisan girl who was captured by the Germans, survived the atrocities of the Nazis and stubbornly accepted death.
In October 1942, Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, along with other Komsomol members (not all of them became heroes of the Great Patriotic War), enrolled in a detachment for sabotage behind enemy lines. The girl recently experienced an acute form of meningitis and suffered from a "nervous disease", but persuaded the commission to accept her into the squad.
In November 1941, a fatal order came. The group was supposed to expel the Nazis in the cold in the field, to smoke them from shelters. The commanders were given the task of burning ten villages occupied by the Germans.
Near one of the villages, the detachment of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya stumbled into an ambush, was dispersed during the confrontation. Some fighters died on the spot, others were captured. The girl survived and became part of a small group led by Boris Krainov.
Zoya was captured by the Germans while trying to set fire to the house. After a short interrogation, the Komsomol was led to execution. In hot pursuit, Pyotr Lidov went to that village. Then he just met the partisan who knew Zoe. It was he who identified the body of the girl, indicating that she called herself Tanya. The identity was finally confirmed only in February 1942 on an identification issued by a special commission.
Lena Golikov
The boy was only fifteen years old when the war came to the country. The Komsomolets hero of the Great Patriotic War worked at the plant after finishing seven classes. When the Nazis captured his city, Lenya went to the partisans. The command appreciated the brave and determined youth.
Leonid Golikov accounted for 78 destroyed Germans, 28 operations, several bridges destroyed in the rear of the enemy’s rear, 10 convoys delivering ammunition. When in the summer of 1942 a detachment blew up a car in which a high-ranking German military leader, Richard von Wirtz, was driving, Leonid was able to get important papers about the offensive, the attack was foiled, and the Komsomol member was assigned the rank of Hero of the USSR.
Zina Portnova
Born and graduated from the school of Zoya Portnova in Leningrad. But military operations found her on the territory of Belarus. A pioneer came there for the holidays. A sixteen-year-old girl in 1942 joined an underground organization and distributed anti-fascist leaflets in the occupied territories.
Zina got into the dining room, where she cooked for German officers. There she conducted several sabotage. Even the experienced military marveled at the courage of a pioneer that was not captured by enemies.
Zina was captured by German defectors. She was interrogated and brutally tortured, but the young partisan was silent, she did not betray her. At one of the interrogations, she grabbed a gun from the table and shot three Nazis. After that, Zina Portnova was shot.
"Young guard"
The underground organization operating in modern Lugansk totaled more than a hundred people. The youngest participant was only fourteen years old.
A youth underground organization was formed immediately after the occupation by German troops. The “Young Guard” included both experienced military personnel, who were far from the main units, and local young people. The most famous participants are such Komsomol heroes as Sergey Tyulenin, Lyubov Shevtsova, Oleg Koshevoi, Vasily Levashov, Ulyana Gromova and others.
The Young Guards issued leaflets and committed sabotage. Once they disabled a tank repair workshop, burned down an exchange where lists of people whom the Germans planned to bring to Germany for forced labor were kept.
The "Young Guard" was revealed because of the traitors. The Nazis tortured and shot more than 70 people. Their feat is immortalized in one of the books of A. Fadeev and a film of the same name.
Elizaveta Chaykina
From October 1941 until the day of her death, the girl fought in partisan detachments in the territory of modern Tver region. Once the Komsomol received the task of scouting the number of enemy troops. The former fist noticed her and told the Nazis. The Nazis took Lisa Chaikin to Peno. She was brutally tortured, trying to find out where the partisans were. The courageous partisan was shot in November 1941.
Nikolay Gastello
Nikolai Frantsevich was a German who lived in Russia for a long time. The young man took part in air battles during the Soviet-Finnish war. By the beginning of the German offensive, Nikolai was already the squadron commander. In air battles in Belarus, the commander Gastello and his crew destroyed most of the convoy of German armored vehicles, but they died. This is the official version, which many times was told by the Russian media to the son of Nikolai, Victor Gastello. In the nineties, versions appeared that it was not Nikolai, but the pilot of the second aircraft, who had accomplished the feat, and Gastello ejected. This was due to the published data on the exhumation of the remains from the alleged grave of the hero in 1951. At the place where, according to the assumptions, the Gastello plane crashed, personal belongings of his colleagues were found, including the commander of another crew, A. A. Maslov.