General Dmitry Karbyshev, Hero of the Soviet Union: biography. The feat of General Karbyshev

Future Hero of the Soviet Union Dmitry Karbyshevwas born in 1880 in Omsk. He had a noble lineage: his father worked as a military official. When the head of the family died prematurely, the child was only 12 years old, and care for him lay on his mother's shoulders.

Childhood

The family had Tatar roots and belonged toethnoconfessional group of Kryashens, professing Orthodoxy, despite the Turkic origin. Dmitry Karbyshev also had an older brother. In 1887, he was arrested for taking part in the revolutionary movement of students at Kazan University. Vladimir was arrested, and the family was in a quandary.

Nevertheless, Dmitry Karbyshev was able to finishSiberian Cadet Corps thanks to his talents and diligence. After this school was followed by the Mykolaiv Engineering School. In it, the young military man also showed himself very well. Karbyshev was sent to the border to Manchuria, where he served as one of the commanders in the company responsible for telegraph communication.

Service in the Tsarist Army

On the eve of the Russo-Japanese War, the junior officerreceived the rank of lieutenant. With the onset of the armed conflict, Dmitry Karbyshev was sent to the intelligence service. He made connections, was responsible for the state of bridges at the front and participated in some important battles. So, he was in the heat when the battle at Mukden broke out.

After the war he did not live longVladivostok, where he continued his service in the engineer battalion. In the years 1908-1911. the officer was trained at the Nikolayev Military Engineering Academy. Having finished it, he went to Brest-Litovsk as a staff captain, where he took part in the construction of the Brest Fortress.

Since these years Karbyshev was on the westernhe was at the front of the First World War from the very first day of its announcement. Most of the officer's service passed under the command of the famous Alexei Brusilov. It was the South-Western Front, where Russia waged war with Austria-Hungary with varying success. For example, Karbyshev took part in the successful capture of Peremyshl, as well as in the Brusilov breakthrough. The last days of the war Karbyshev spent on the border with Romania, where he was engaged in strengthening defensive positions. During several years at the front, he managed to get a wound in the leg, but still returned to the system.

Transition to the Red Army

In October 1917 in Petrograd there wasa coup after which the Bolsheviks came to power. Vladimir Lenin wanted to end the war with Germany as soon as possible in order to redirect all forces to the struggle with internal enemies: the white movement. To do this, mass propaganda began in the active army, agitating for the Soviet power.

This is how Karbyshev found himself in the ranks of the Red Armythe Guards. In it, he was responsible for the organization of defensive and engineering works. Especially Karbyshev did a lot in the Volga region, where in 1918-1919. ran the Eastern Front. The talent and ability of the engineer helped the Red Army to gain a foothold in this region and continue its offensive towards the Urals. Career growth Karbyshev was crowned with the appointment in the 5th Army of the Red Army to one of the leading posts. He ended the civil war in the Crimea, where he was responsible for engineering work in Perekop, connecting the peninsula with the mainland.

Between World Wars

In the peace period of the 20's and 30's, Karbyshevwas engaged in teaching in military academies and even became a professor. Periodically, he took part in the implementation of important infrastructure defense projects. For example, we are talking about the "Lines of Stalin."

With the start of the Soviet-Finnish war in 1939Karbyshev was in the headquarters, from where he wrote recommendations on the breakthrough of the defensive line of Mannerheim. A year later he became Lieutenant-General and Doctor of Military Sciences.

During his journalistic activitiesKarbyshev wrote about 100 works on engineering. According to his textbooks and manuals, many specialists of the Red Army were trained until the Great Patriotic War. Especially a lot of time General Karbyshev devoted to studying the issue of forcing rivers during armed conflicts. In 1940 he joined the CPSU (b).

German captivity

A few weeks before the GreatPatriotic War, General Karbyshev was sent to serve in the headquarters of the 3rd Army. He was in Grodno - very near the border. It was here that the first strikes of the Wehrmacht were sent, when on June 22, 1941 the operation on blitzkrieg began.

Within a few days, the army and headquarters of Karbyshev were surrounded. An attempt to escape from the boiler failed, and the general was contused in the Mogilev region, not far from the Dnieper.

Caught captive, he passed manyconcentration camps, the last of which was Mauthausen. General Karbyshev was a well-known specialist at home and abroad. Therefore, the Nazis from the Gestapo and the SS tried in many ways to pull over an elderly officer who could transfer valuable information to German headquarters and help the Reich.

The Nazis believed that they could easily be persuadedKarbysheva cooperate with them. The officer was a nobleman and served for many years in the royal army. These features of the biography could say that General Karbyshev is a random person in the Bolshevik circle and would happily make a deal with the Reich.

The 60-year-old officer was brought several timesexplanatory conversations to the relevant authorities, but the old man refused to cooperate with the Germans. Each time he declared with confidence that the Soviet Union would win the Great Patriotic War, and the Nazis would be defeated. None of his actions did not say that the prisoner was broken or lost his spirit.

In Hammelburg

In the spring of 1942, Karbyshev Dmitry Mikhailovich wastransferred to Hammelburg. It was a special concentration camp for captured officers. Here they created the most comfortable living conditions. Thus, the German leadership tried to win over to its side the high-ranking officers of the enemy armies, who enjoyed great prestige in their homeland. In all, 18,000 Soviet captives visited Hammelburg during the war. Each of them had high military ranks. Many broke down after they left the death camps and found themselves in comfortable and convenient places of detention, where they had friendly talks with them. However, Karbyshev Dmitry Mikhailovich did not react to the psychological treatment of the enemy and continued to remain loyal to the Soviet Union.

A special person was assigned to the general -Colonel Pelit. This Wehrmacht officer at one time served in the army of Tsarist Russia and was fluent in Russian. In addition, he worked with Karbyshev during the First World War in Brest-Litovsk.

An old friend tried to find a variety of approaches.to Karbyshev. If he refused to cooperate directly with the Wehrmacht, Pelit offered him compromise options, for example, to work as a historian and describe the military operations of the Red Army in the current war. However, such proposals did not act on the officer.

Interestingly, the Germans originally wantedit was Karbyshev who became the head of the Russian Liberation Army, which was eventually led by General Vlasov. But regular refusals to cooperate have done their job: the Wehrmacht abandoned his idea. Now in Germany they waited for at least the fact that the prisoner would agree to work in Berlin as a valuable logistician.

In Berlin

General Dmitry Karbyshev, whose biographyconsisted of constant travel, still was a tasty morsel for the Reich, and the Germans did not lose hope of finding a common language with him. After the failure in Hammelburg, they transferred the old man to solitary confinement in Berlin and kept him in the dark for three weeks.

This was done specifically to remindKarbyshev that he may become a victim of terror at any time if he does not wish to cooperate with the Wehrmacht. Finally, the prisoner was sent to the investigator for the last time. The Germans asked for the help of one of their most respected military engineering specialists. It was Heinz Rubenheimer. This famous expert before the war, like Karbyshev, worked on monographs on their general profile. Dmitry Mikhailovich himself treated him with a well-known piety as a respected specialist.

Rubenheimer made his vis-a-vissentence. If Karbyshev had agreed to cooperate, he could have received his own private apartment and full economic security thanks to the treasury of the German state. In addition, the engineer was offered free access to any libraries and archives in Germany. He could do his theoretical research or work on experiments in the field of engineering. At the same time, Karbyshev was allowed to recruit a team of specialist assistants. The officer would become a lieutenant general in the army of the German state.

Karbyshev feat was that he rejectedall the proposals of the enemy, despite several very persistent attempts. A variety of methods of persuasion were used against him: intimidation, flattery, promises, etc. In the end, he was offered only theoretical work. That is, Karbyshev did not even have to scold Stalin and the Soviet leadership. All that was required of him was to become an obedient cog in the Third Reich system.

Despite the health problems and impressiveage, General Dmitry Karbyshev, and this time he answered with a decisive refusal. After that, in the German leadership, they gave up on him and wrote off as a person who was fanatically devoted to the disastrous cause of Bolshevism. The Reich could not use such people for their own purposes.

On hard labor

From Berlin, Karbyshev was transferred to Flossenbürg -concentration camp, where cruel orders reigned, and prisoners without interruption ruined their health in hard labor. And if such work deprived the remnants of the forces of young captives, then one can imagine how hard it was for the elderly Karbyshev, who was already in his seventh decade.

However, during his stay in Flüssenbürg heI never complained to the camp leadership about poor conditions. After the war, the Soviet Union recognized the names of heroes who had not broken down in concentration camps. Numerous prisoners told about the courageous behavior of the general who had been with him in some work. Dmitry Karbyshev, whose feat was accomplished every day, became an example to follow. He inspired optimism in the doomed prisoners.

Because of the leadership qualities of the general translated fromone camp to another, so that it does not disturb the minds of other prisoners. So he traveled all over Germany, having been imprisoned at once by dozens of death factories.

Every month the news from the front becameAll the more disturbing for the German leadership. After the victory at Stalingrad, the Red Army finally took the initiative in their hands and launched a reciprocal offensive in the western direction. When the front approached the borders of pre-war Germany, an emergency evacuation of the concentration camps began. The staff dealt brutally with the prisoners, after which he fled into the interior of the country. This practice was ubiquitous.

Massacre at Mauthausen

In 1945, Dmitry Karbyshev found himself in a concentration camp called Mauthausen. Austria, where this terrible institution was located, was under the blow of the Soviet troops.

For the protection of such objects have always been responsible.SS attack aircraft. They led the massacre of prisoners. On the night of February 18, 1945, they gathered about a thousand prisoners, among whom was Karbyshev. The prisoners were stripped and sent to showers, where they were under streams of icy water. The temperature difference led to the fact that many simply refused to heart.

Prisoners who survived the first torture session were givenunderwear and sent to the courtyard. It was freezing outside. Prisoners were shy in small groups. Soon they began to be watered from the fire hose with the same icy water. General Karbyshev, standing in the crowd, persuaded his comrades to fasten and not show cowardice. Some tried to escape from the ice streams directed at them. They were seized, beaten with batons and returned to their places. In the end, almost everyone died, including Dmitry Karbyshev. He was 64 years old.

Soviet investigation

The last minutes of Karbyshev’s life became known at home thanks to the testimony of a Canadian major who managed to survive the fateful night of the massacre of Mauthausen prisoners.

Collected fragmentary information about the fate of the prisonerThe generals spoke of his exceptional manhood and devotion to his duty. In August 1946, he posthumously received the country's highest award - the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

In the future, in the wholesocialist state monuments opened in his honor. Also called the general street name. The main monument to Karbyshev is certainly located on the territory of Mauthausen. At the site of the concentration camp, a memorial to the victims and innocently tortured was opened. This is where the monument is located. The heroes of the Soviet Union of the Great Patriotic War deservedly have this inflexible general in their ranks.

His image was especially popular in the postwar period.time. The fact is that of the numerous generals who found themselves in concentration camps, it was difficult to make heroes of the country. Many of them were forcibly deported back home, and a dozen more were repressed. Someone was hanged in the Vlasov case, others were in the gulag on charges of cowardice. Stalin himself was in great need in the image of a spotless hero, who could be an example for future generations of the army.

Karbyshev turned out to be just such a man. His name is often flashed on the pages of newspapers. Dmitry Karbyshev was popular in literature: several works were written about him. For example, Sergey Vasilyev dedicated the poem “Dignity” to the general. Another prisoner of Mauthausen, Yuri Pilyar, became the author of the artistic biography of Officer Honor.

The Soviet government did everything in its powerfeat of Karbyshev. At the same time, the declassified documents of the NKVD indicate that the investigation about his death was carried out hastily and at the direction from above. For example, the testimony of the Canadian Major St. Clair (first witness) was inconsistent and inaccurate. He did not learn from those many details that Karbyshev’s biography then acquired.

St. Clair, on whose testimony it was clarifiedthe fate of the deceased general himself died a few years after the end of the war from ruined health. When Soviet investigators questioned him, he was already mortally ill. Nevertheless, in 1948, the writer Novogrudsky finished the official book on the biography of Karbyshev. In it, he added many facts that St. Clair never mentioned.

Without diminishing the courageous behavior of this general,the Soviet leadership tried to close their eyes to the fate of other high-ranking officers of their army who were tortured and died in the dungeons of the Gestapo. Almost all of them became victims of the Stalinist policy of oblivion of "traitors" and "enemies of the people."

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