The Great Patriotic War: How it Began. The Presidential Library tells about the History of the Defence of the Brest Fortress

On Sunday, June 22nd, 1941, Nazi Germany and its allies attacked our country with an unprecedented force: 190 divisions, more than 4,000 tanks, 47,000 guns and mortars, approximately 4,500 aircraft, and up to 200 ships. In total, there were more than 5 million people involved in this attack, according to the collection of documents and materials from the Presidential Library entitled 1941: Documents and Materials: the 70th Anniversary of the Beginning of the Great Patriotic War. The Great Patriotic War lasted for 1,418 days and nights.

Brest was one of the first cities in the Soviet Union to be attacked by German troops. According to the German plan for the attack on the Soviet Union ("Barbarossa"), the rapid defeat of Soviet forces in Belarus was intended to open the way for a smooth advance towards Smolensk and Moscow. Army Group Center, led by Field Marshal F. Bock, concentrated its forces in this direction.

The German troops planned to capture the Brest Fortress in eight hours, but faced fierce resistance from the defenders. This was the first time the fascists realized that their "march to the east" would not be an easy task.

At 6:40 in the morning, General Alexander Andreevich Korobkov, the commander of the 4th Army, reported to Dmitry Pavlov, the commander of the Western Special Military District: "At 4:15 in the morning on June 22, 1941, enemy troops began shelling the Brest Fortress and the surrounding area. Simultaneously, they began bombing the airfields in Brest, Kobrin and Pruzhany. By 6:00, artillery fire in the Brest area had intensified, and the city was on fire. The 42nd, 6th, and 75th infantry divisions and the 22nd and 30th tank divisions were moving into their positions, but there was no information on the 49th infantry division. The headquarters of the 28th Corps is in Zhabinka. By 6:30, there was information about the enemy crossing the river Western Bug, but I do not have details. The 22nd tank division was being pulled back in a disorganized manner under artillery fire. From 6:00, enemy planes began appearing in groups of 3-9 aircraft and bombed the Pruzhany area, with unknown results.”

As the archives show, the Nazis who attacked the Brest Fortress had more than ten times the number of soldiers as the defenders. There were only about 4,000 people in the ranks of the defenders, according to Hero of the Soviet Union Major Pyotr Gavrilov, who participated in the defense of the fortress. His book The Fortress Is Fighting is available in collections of the Presidential Library.

After the withdrawal of the main forces, the garrison of Brest consisted only of separate units from the 42nd and 6th Rifle Divisions of the 28th Rifle Corps, as well as the 33rd Engineer Regiment and border outposts. Captain Ivan Zubachev commanded the combined forces of the defenders, with regimental commissar Yefim Fomin serving as his deputy.

With surprise and annoyance, the German commanders recognized that the resistance of the fortress' garrison was not only not weakening, but was becoming stronger and more organized by the hour. Intoxicated by easy victories in the west, the fascist officers at the walls of Brest Fortress saw with alarm that the war in the east was far from their expectations according to the Barbarossa plan. Here is what General Blumentritt, the former chief of staff of Hitler's Fourth Army, told the English historian Liddell Hart after the war: "The first battle in June 1941 revealed the Red Army to us. Our losses were up to 50%. There we learned what it means to fight the Russian way."

Despite the failure of the quick attack, the Nazis managed to encircle the fortress. Artillery fire on the citadel was interspersed with air raids, and incendiary bombs and tear gas were used. The water supply system of the fortress was destroyed, forcing the defenders to draw water from nearby rivers – the Mukhavets and the Bug – under enemy fire. Supplies of medicine, bandages and food were running low...

A few days after the start of the war, attempts were made to analyze the causes of the current situation. On June 26, a detailed report by Leonov, the commissioner of the third department of the tenth mixed aviation division, noted that when German military units sent signals in red, white, and green colors at 12:00 on June 22, the staff of the fortress perceived it as a training exercise.

In a memorandum from the secretary of the Brest regional committee of the Communist Party of Belarus, M.N. Tupitsyn, to the Central Committee of the CPSU(b) and the Central Committee of the Belarusian Communist Party on June 25, problems were reported regarding organization at the front in the Brest-Kobrin area. According to reports from the Red Army, some units and formations did not have enough ammunition. In the 49th Infantry Division, confusion arose after the first shots. The unit commanders did not study the action plan developed for the event of war. The military and political leadership analyzed the circumstances of the early days of the conflict and drew appropriate organizational conclusions, but the fate of the defenders of the Brest Fortress at that time depended solely on themselves.

By early July, the enemy had managed to capture the fortifications on the Central Island, destroying the main center of resistance for the defenders of the Brest Fortress. The fight against the enemy was now being continued by scattered groups of Red Army soldiers and individual fighters. "Up to two-thirds of the personnel, over ninety percent of the material parts of the divisional and regimental artillery, and at least a percentage of the cavalry were victims of the unspeakable treachery and atrocity of the crimes committed by German fascists..."

According to a handwritten report dated July 5, 1941 from the head of the political propaganda department of the 6th Infantry Division of the 4th Army on the Western Front, there were 910 personnel left, with 13,691 required by the state. Under these extremely difficult circumstances, the personnel showed examples of heroism and courage in defending every inch of Soviet territory. The courage of the defenders of the Brest Fortress is also mentioned in a report by the head of the political propaganda department of the 42nd Infantry Division of the 4th Army on the Western Front, Bogatikov. He says that soldiers, commanders, and political workers are eager to enter battle to defeat the Nazi invaders.

The heroic defense of the Brest Fortress continued until the end of July 1941, when on July 28, 1944, Soviet troops liberated it after three years of Nazi occupation. One of its last defenders left an inscription on the melted bricks with a flamethrower: "I am dying, but I do not surrender! Farewell, Motherland."

Major Peter Gavrilov fought the last battle against the enemy in the Brest Fortress on July 23, 1941. He was wounded and captured by the Germans, and remained in Nazi camps until May 1945. Gavrilov's memories of that day are recorded in his book, "The Fortress Is Fighting."

Fragments of newsreels included in the collection of the Presidential Library, dedicated to preserving the memory of the Great Victory, allow readers to watch footage of border battles and the defense of the Brest fortress. The collection was formed since 2010 and includes official documents, books, periodicals, testimonies from combatants and home-front workers, their diaries and personal documents, photographs and newsreels, as well as articles and newspapers from the war years, and audio recordings.

The Presidential Library's portal also presents a collection of digitized archival documents and film and photographic materials titled World War II in Archival Documents, which was created in collaboration with the Federal Archive Agency since 2020. So far, more than 12,500 archival documents have been included, many of which were previously classified.