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

The future Hero of the Soviet Union Dmitry Karbyshev was 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 the shoulders of his mother.

Childhood

The family had Tatar roots and belonged to the ethnoconfessional group of Kryashens, professing Orthodoxy, despite the Turkic origin. Dmitry Karbyshev also had an older brother. In 1887, he was arrested for participating 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 finish the Siberian 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 in Manchuria, where he served as one of the chiefs in the company in charge of telegraph communication.

Service in the royal army

On the eve of the Russo-Japanese War the junior officer received the rank of lieutenant. With the outbreak 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 hell, when the battle broke out near Mukden.

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

Since these years Karbyshev was on the western borders of the country, he was on the front of the First World War from the very first day of its announcement. Most of the service officer 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, a coup took place in Petrograd, after which the Bolsheviks came to power. Vladimir Lenin wanted to end the war as soon as possible with Germany 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 Guard. 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 1920s and 1930s Karbyshev was 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 "Stalin's Lines".

With the start of the Soviet-Finnish war in 1939, Karbyshev was at headquarters, from where he wrote recommendations on the breakthrough of Mannerheim's defensive line. A year later he became a lieutenant-general and a doctor of military sciences.

During his journalistic activities Karbyshev wrote about 100 works on engineering sciences. According to his textbooks and manuals, many specialists of the Red Army were trained up to the Great Patriotic War. Particularly much time General Karbyshev devoted to the study of the question of crossing rivers during armed conflicts. In 1940 he joined the CPSU (b).

German captivity

A few weeks before the outbreak of the Great Patriotic 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 blows of the Wehrmacht were sent, when on June 22, 1941 the operation on blitzkrieg began.

Within a few days the army and Karbyshev's headquarters were surrounded. The attempt to escape from the boiler failed, and the general was shell-shocked in the Mogilev region, not far from the Dnieper.

Once in captivity, he passed many concentration camps, the last of which was Mauthausen. General Karbyshev was a famous specialist and abroad. Therefore, the Nazis from the Gestapo and the SS tried in various ways to draw on their side an elderly officer who could pass on valuable information to the German headquarters and help the Reich.

The Nazis believed that they could easily persuade Karbyshev to cooperate with them. The officer was a nobleman, served for many years in the tsarist army. These features of the biography could indicate that General Karbyshev is an accidental person in the Bolshevik circle and will gladly go on a deal with the Reich.

60-year-old officer several times led to explanatory discussions in the relevant authorities, but the old man refused to cooperate with the Germans. Every time he confidently declared that the Soviet Union would win the Great Patriotic War, and the Nazis would be routed. None of his actions did not say that the captive is broken or lost heart.

In Hammelburg

In the spring of 1942, Karbyshev Dmitry Mikhailovich was transferred to Hammelburg. It was a special concentration camp for captured officers. Here for them the most comfortable living conditions were created. Thus, the German leadership tried to win over to its side high-ranking officers of enemy armies, who enjoyed great prestige in their homeland. In total during the war in Hammelburg visited 18 thousand Soviet prisoners. 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 confinement, 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 man was assigned to the general - Colonel Pelit. This officer of the Wehrmacht once 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.

The old comrade tried to find a variety of approaches to Karbyshev. If he refused direct cooperation with the Wehrmacht, then 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.

It is interesting that originally the Germans wanted Karbyshev to become the head of the Russian Liberation Army, which, in the end, was headed by General Vlasov. But the regular refusals of cooperation did their job: the Wehrmacht refused his idea. Now in Germany they expected at least that the prisoner would agree to work in Berlin as a valuable logistical specialist.

In Berlin

General Dmitry Karbyshev, whose biography consisted of constant crossings, was still a tidbit for the Reich, and the Germans did not lose the hope of finding a common language with him. After the failure in Hammelburg, they transferred the old man to a solitary cell in Berlin and kept him there for three weeks.

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

Rubenheimer made to his counterpart a weighty proposal. If Karbyshev agreed to cooperate, he could get 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 of Germany. He could do his theoretical research or work on experiments in the field of engineering. At the same Karbyshev was allowed to recruit a team of assistant specialists. The officer would become a lieutenant-general in the army of the German state.

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

Despite the health problems and impressive age, General Dmitry Karbyshev also this time responded with a resolute refusal. After that, they waved at him in the German leadership and were written off as a man fanatically devoted to the blatant cause of Bolshevism. To use such people for their own purposes, the Reich could not.

In hard labor

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

However, during his entire stay in Flussenbürg, he never complained to the leadership of the camp for poor conditions of detention. After the war, the Soviet Union learned the names of the heroes who had not broken in the concentration camps. The courageous behavior of the general was told by numerous prisoners who had been with him in some works. Dmitry Karbyshev, whose feat was performed every day, became an example for imitation. He instilled optimism in doomed prisoners.

Because of leadership qualities, the general was transferred from one camp to another, so that he would not disturb the minds of other prisoners. So he traveled all over Germany, being imprisoned immediately by a dozen "factories of death."

With each month, news from the fronts became more and more alarming for the German leadership. After the victory at Stalingrad, the Red Army finally took the initiative and launched a retaliatory offensive in the west. When the front came to the frontiers of pre-war Germany, urgent evacuation of concentration camps began. The staff brutally dealt with the prisoners, and then fled inland. This practice was ubiquitous.

Massacre in 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 Soviet troops.

For the protection of such objects always answered SS storm troopers. It was they who directed 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 the showers, where they found themselves under streams of icy water. The temperature drop led to the fact that many simply refused the heart.

Prisoners who survived the first torture session were given underwear and sent to the courtyard. It was freezing weather outside. Prisoners were shy in small groups. Soon they began to water from the fire hose with the same ice water. General Karbyshev, who stood 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 truncheons and returned to their seats. In the end, almost everyone died, including Dmitry Karbyshev. He was 64 years old.

Soviet investigation

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

The collected fragmentary information about the fate of the captured general spoke of his exceptional masculinity and devotion to his duty. In August 1946, he posthumously received the highest award of the country - the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

In the future, on the territory of the entire socialist state, monuments were opened in his honor. Also the name of the general called the streets. The main monument to Karbyshev, of course, is on the territory of Mauthausen. On the site of the concentration camp was opened a memorial to the memory of the dead and innocently tortured. It is here that the monument is located. Heroes of the Soviet Union of Great Patriotic War deservedly have in their ranks this inflexible general.

His image was especially popular in the postwar period. The fact is that of the numerous generals who found themselves in concentration camps, it was difficult to make the 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, while others found themselves in the Gulag on charges of cowardice. Stalin himself very much needed the image of an unblemished hero who could become an example for future generations of the army.

It was this man that turned out to be Karbyshev. His name often flashed in the pages of newspapers. Dmitry Karbyshev was popular in the literature: several works were written about him. For example, Sergey Vasiliev devoted the poem "Dignity" to the general. Another prisoner of Mauthausen, Yuri Pilyar, became the author of the artistic biography of the officer "Honor".

The Soviet authorities tried in every possible way to immortalize the exploit of Karbyshev. At the same time declassified documents of the NKVD indicate that the investigation of his death was carried out hastily and on orders from above. For example, the testimony of the Canadian Major Saint Claire (first witness) was inconsistent and inaccurate. From him did not learn those numerous details, which then acquired the biography of Karbyshev.

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

Without belittling the courageous behavior of this general, the Soviet leadership tried to turn a blind eye to the fate of other high-ranking officers of his army, tortured and killed in Gestapo torture chambers. Almost all of them became victims of the Stalinist policy of oblivion of "traitors" and "enemies of the people".