Because of its strategically important location, Veliky Novgorod and its environs became a place of fierce fighting in the first months of the Second World War.

“The first bombs fell on the city already on July 8, 1941. They suffered from the Novgorod Kremlin and the bridge across the Volkhov, ”said Dmitry Surzhik, a methodologist of the scientific department of the Victory Museum, in an interview with RT.

According to the expert, a few days later German ground forces entered the outskirts of Novgorod. July 13, the Nazis captured the town of Soltsy.

“Attacking Leningrad, Hitler’s Army Group North could not get around Novgorod. The city was on the way of the main German offensive, ”Doctor of Historical Sciences Mikhail Myagkov noted in a conversation with RT the scientific director of the Russian Military Historical Society.

  • Soldiers in a trench with a light machine gun. Soviet troops are preparing for the defense near Novgorod. 1941
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  • © Alexander Gribovsky

The Novgorod army group of troops at that time was commanded by Major General Ivan Korovnikov. At the head of the 28th Panzer Division, Ivan Chernyakhovsky, the future commander of the 3rd Byelorussian Front, fought. On August 19, the Nazis were able to enter Novgorod, but until the 24th, Soviet troops held the eastern part of the city and tried to make counterattacks. “On August 24, junior political commissar Alexander Pankratov was one of the first in the history of the Great Patriotic War in the battles of Novgorod to cover an enemy machine gun, thanks to which his unit went on the attack and managed to occupy the Kirillovsky monastery,” said Mikhail Myagkov.

Despite all the efforts of the Soviet troops, Novgorod could not be held. The city itself and 18 of the 27 districts of the future Novgorod region (it will be created in 1944) were captured by the Nazis.

Nazi occupation

“The Nazis did not consider the Slavs to be full-fledged people. The population of Novgorod, according to their plans, was to be enslaved, destroyed or evicted to Siberia, ”said Mikhail Myagkov.

According to the expert, together with the units of the Wehrmacht and the SS, the so-called Blue Division took part in the occupation of Novgorod - Spanish volunteers who fought on the side of the Nazis. And traitors from among Soviet citizens were united on the initiative of the Abwehr into the 667th punitive battalion "Shelon", which destroyed around 40 settlements around Novgorod.

In the city and its environs, the Nazis and their accomplices killed about 15 thousand civilians and almost 200 thousand prisoners of war, more than 150 thousand people were taken into slavery.

One of the worst examples of the Nazi cruelty was the destruction of the villages of Bychkovo and Pochinok. As historians point out, at first German troops and their accomplices fired village houses with mortar shells, then drove the old men, women and children onto the ice of the frozen Polisti River and opened fire on them with machine guns. For sure, no one survived, the Nazis blew up ice with mines - the wounded and helpless people died in icy water. Devastated villages punitive burned to the ground.

  • A column of German cyclists enters the captured Novgorod. August 1941
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  • © vnpfoto

As Dmitry Surzhik told, having reached the Kolmov Psychiatric Hospital, which was a kind of all-Russian research center in psychiatry, the Nazis dealt with two hundred patients, injecting them with lethal injections, and several hundred patients died to death. Part of the medical staff of the medical institution was shot.

The Nazis destroyed thousands of cultural and educational institutions, houses, agricultural and industrial buildings. Priceless historical and cultural monuments were plundered, burned or shot out of cannons: the St. Sophia Cathedral, the Khutyn and Yuriev monasteries, the Church of Our Savior on Nereditsa, and many others.

“The commission on accounting for the atrocities and destruction of the Nazi invaders estimated the damage in the billions of rubles. But the main thing, of course, is not money, but human lives and the priceless objects of the cultural heritage of our people lost due to the Nazis, ”Mikhail Myagkov emphasized.

The liberation of Novgorod

On January 14, 1944, the Novgorod-Luga offensive began. The troops of the Volkhov front had to crack the well-prepared enemy defenses. Novgorod was planned to bypass simultaneously from the north and south. The first positions of the 38th German Army Corps were attacked by units of the 59th Army. It was necessary to attack in extremely difficult conditions: because of heavy snowfall, the artillery was ineffective, the aircraft practically could not act, some tanks were stuck in funnels and swamps. Nevertheless, the Soviet troops were able to break through Hitler’s defenses in several places at once.

The Germans threw their reserves under Novgorod, but this did not help them. The 38th Army Corps was threatened. "The Nazis fled from Novgorod, having suffered significant losses by the dead and prisoners, and this was the beginning of retribution for their crimes," said Mikhail Myagkov.

  • The painting "The flight of fascists from Novgorod", Kukryniksy, 1944-1946

Fleeing from the advancing units of the Red Army, the Nazis abandoned all their heavy weapons. On January 20, 1944, the 191st, 225th and 382nd infantry divisions entered Novgorod. Over the Novgorod Kremlin was raised the Soviet flag.

The Red Army soldiers who entered Novgorod recalled after the war that they doubted whether it would be possible to revive the city at all. Of the 48 thousand pre-war population, only a few dozen people remained in it (according to most sources, there were 51 residents in the city at the time of liberation. - RT ). Of the almost 2.5 thousand houses, only 40 have survived.

“The Nazis almost destroyed the city, but according to the decision of the Soviet government, Veliky Novgorod was among the 15 localities that were to be restored first after Victory. The work of architects, builders and restorers was simply titanic, ”said Dmitry Surzhik.

According to Mikhail Myagkov, the liberation of Novgorod played a strategically important role. "January 20, 1944 was one of the key moments in the struggle for the final lifting of the blockade of Leningrad - a week later, the city, 900 days under siege, began to gradually return to normal life," he said.

“In Novgorod and its environs the Hitlerites carried out the most brutal policy of genocide, having committed a lot of crimes against humanity. However, not everyone, but many of them had to answer for their actions, ”said the expert.

  • Novgorod process, 1947
  • © Prosecutor's Office of the Novgorod region

In 1947, the Novgorod process began over 19 Nazi officers and generals. The criminal case consisted of 54 volumes, several dozens of witnesses testified in court. The six defendants fully admitted their guilt in the destruction of the Soviet civilians, 12 in part, and only the former commander of the 38th Army Corps, General of Artillery Kurt Herzog, tried to unlock. However, evidence was presented that it was the Duke who led the killing of 3.7 thousand civilians, the removal and melting of the golden domes of St. Sophia Cathedral, the dismantling of the Millennium of Russia monument and preparing it for shipment as a gift to the city of Insterburg.

On December 18, 1947, all 19 defendants were sentenced to the highest punishment at that time - 25 years in prison. After the death of Joseph Stalin, they were repatriated to Germany.

Traitors from among Soviet citizens, including soldiers of the punitive battalion "Shelon", were actively searched by the state security bodies and sent to court in the 1950s-1960s. A native of the Kiev region, the commander of the 3rd company of the “Shelon” battalion, Koshelap, was sentenced to 25 years in prison, and the commander of the reconnaissance group of the battalion, Grigoriev, was shot. However, the battalion commander, Major of the Wehrmacht, Alexander Riess, who personally tortured and killed Soviet civilians, hid in the United States and escaped punishment, and the mayor of Novgorod Vasily Ponomarev escaped to Germany.

“The Russian military-historical society is taking measures to preserve the memory of Soviet soldiers who liberated the territory of the Novgorod region. In Staraya Russa, a monument was erected to the Soviet soldier and the museum “Warlords of Victory” was opened, in Novgorod the exhibition “War and Myths” was held. And in the Victory Museum in Moscow now opened the exhibition “Novgorod. Chronicles of Liberation. It is always necessary to remember about the feat accomplished by Soviet soldiers, ”concluded Mikhail Myagkov.