The associations arising from every sane person who has heard this word are usually the same: shooting, explosions, fires, blood, corpses, weapons and armored vehicles. Deprivation and suffering, overstrain, unparalleled courage and heroism. There can be no peace in a war. There is no war without heroes.
Heroism in the war. Composition-reasoning
But who is he - a hero? We have every right to talk about what courage and heroism are in war, based on the stories of our grandfathers and great-grandfathers, read books, viewed newsreels of those years, films made. It's about the Great Patriotic War.
Actions and accomplishments, which we call heroic, can be divided into several types. And I want to dwell on each of them without exception.
Rear heroism during the war
One of the most popular slogans of the Great Patriotic War times “Everything for the front, everything for the victory!” It was by no means an empty set of ideological cliches. Work in several shifts, the constant overfulfillment of production plans, the development and manufacture of new products as soon as possible, which are not dreamed of in peacetime. And all this against the background of constant malnutrition, lack of sleep, often in cold conditions. Isn't that heroism? Let it be small, daily, inconspicuous on an individual level, but prevailing on the scale of a whole country into one Great Victory for all. Each of them was a hero: and a twelve-year-old boy, who had replaced his father who had gone to the front at the machine; and a teacher conducting classes in cold classes; and a high school student, after school, going to the hospital to help care for the wounded; and millions of others, each engaged in his own business, necessary at that time. It is enough to recall the epic of the initial period of the war, when the factories were evacuated to the eastern regions of the country, and literally a few months later the enterprises thrown out in the bare fields began to produce much-needed products at the front.
Heroes of everyday life
Ordinary heroism during the war. Oddly enough, but this is how ordinary life on the front is seen - just a routine. If someone does not agree, then try to imagine being every day in the trenches, without movement and even without special fights, with occasional shootings. Every day, walk along one fairly limited route; every day to clean weapons and ammunition, various chores, etc. In short, just live in one place. Routine. Now remember that this is all happening at the forefront; that a few hundred meters, literally behind a ravine, is a mortal enemy who can at any moment try to kill you or your comrade; that every minute of your life here may be the last. And in these conditions of unbearable tension of will, strength and emotions to be constantly, but to find the strength to remain human. Isn't that heroism?
Heroism of officers
Here we will talk about officers in low ranks (from junior lieutenant to captain), occupying posts from platoon to battalion commander, from calculation commander to battery commander, etc. All those who were on the line of direct contact with the enemy led company in battle, commanded a tank, sat at the helm of the plane, went as part of a reconnaissance group behind the front line. In principle, any of them is the same soldier, but with a certain amount of additional responsibility assigned to him by the command.
Daily raise a platoon / company / battalion to attack, directly on enemy machine guns. In the evening, write a funeral for the relatives of the dead soldiers, while not forgetting the needs of the living. Every day, get into a tank and race across an open field towards deadly gunshots, minefields, enemy armored monsters. To make three or four flights a day to the territory occupied by the enemy, on a steel, deadly, but such a vulnerable bird, realizing that you can be set on fire at any moment, and you have practically no chance of surviving when falling from heaven. For weeks I’ve been in the open sea, occasionally going down into the water column on my submarine and realizing that the sea is around, and the enemy will take advantage of any of your mistakes, not leaving you even a ghostly hope for salvation. And thousands more other dangers that are inseparable from the natural course of the war, all of which cannot be mentioned in just one topic: "Heroism in war: an essay on courage and self-sacrifice."
Is it possible in such circumstances to say that before lunch the heroism of a person was shown in the war, and after lunch no longer? It should be borne in mind that the unit commander is obliged by his position and essence to think not only for himself, but for the entire personnel. He organizes and conducts the battle, he is responsible for people and material supplies, the availability of ammunition, food and medicine. Colossal stress!
Headquarters heroism
The work of a military leader in war is incredibly complicated. He has in his hands a huge mass of people, equipment, resources, but his personal responsibility only increases many times over. It is in his power to throw all this power into battle. But the life of hundreds of thousands of people depends on how competently and usefully, from the point of view of war, he will manage all this. If he uses up ammunition for nothing, burns tanks and planes in senseless attacks, stupidly loses artillery - all this will have to be restored to the rear, experiencing additional difficulties. If already at the beginning of the operation most of the infantry will be lost, then in the future the commander simply will not have the strength to continue what was started. Not to mention the thousands of ruined lives, the tens of thousands of families into which grief came. How can you measure all the burden that falls on the shoulders of this person - to send thousands of people to death daily?
Recall one of the best marshals of the USSR - K.K. Rokossovsky. During the whole war he personally never fired at the enemy, and personally witnessed the battles personally only from the staff trenches, from a safe distance. But can it be said that he is not a hero? A man who brilliantly designs and embodies the most striking operations; a commander whose troops inflicted tremendous damage to the enemy; a military leader whose military talent was recognized even by the Wehrmacht generals; the person who is one of the creators of Victory is a real hero. All those thousands of officers who fought at that dashing time were, are, and will be the same heroes. The number of stars on shoulder straps and the positions held are not important, because any of them, from lieutenant to marshal, from platoon to Chief of the General Staff, each performed what his homeland commissioned him. Each carried his own measure of cargo, common to all commanders.
Spontaneous heroism
Reflecting on what heroism is during the war years, it is imperative to single out just this kind - spontaneous heroism. There are no divisions by rank and position, for anyone can become a creator of the Feat. It all depends on external circumstances that are unique in each case.
Heroes of the past, present and future
Heroism in the war ... Each student necessarily composes an essay on this subject several times, based primarily on a collective image formed by various sources. But all of them are united by the fact that there is a description of something bright, extraordinary, uniquely out of the general series of events that are impossible in civilian life, but at the same time quite mundane during the conduct of hostilities.
How can one not recall the feat of the garrison of the Brest Fortress? Piercing words “I'm dying, but I don't give up! Goodbye, Motherland! ”, Scratched on the wall, forever cut into the memory of anyone who saw them. The nameless hero, realizing the hopelessness of the resistance and preparing for the inevitable death, remained faithful to the oath to the end.
Nikolai Talalikhin, a fighter pilot, patrolled the sky of Moscow, spent all his ammunition, but he was ordered not to let German bombers out to the capital. And he made the only possible decision at that moment - a ram. Not thinking about his own safety, not weighing the chances of survival, he carried out the order to the end. The first night ram went down in history!
Stalingrad. Pavlov's House
Sergeant Pavlov with a handful of fighters seized the house in the blazing Stalingrad. The ruins, which were a strategically important object, the unit under his command held two long months - sixty-three days of endless shelling and attacks. Sixty-Three Days of Feat!
Nikolai Kuznetsov, a Soviet intelligence officer, under the guise of a German officer in the very den of the enemy, alone against all, obtained the most secret information, destroyed the large leaders of the invaders.
Alexander Matrosov is a simple infantryman. When his company went on the attack, he covered the embrasure of the German bunker with his body. He went to certain death, but saved by his act the lives of dozens of colleagues, ensuring the success of the attack.
Nikolai Sirotinin, a senior sergeant, left alone, more than two hours delayed the advance of the German tank regiment. Alone, he destroyed eleven tanks, seven armored vehicles and nearly sixty Nazis with fire from a gun and carbine.
Dmitry Karbyshev, the general, when he was captured, repeatedly received offers from the command of the German troops for cooperation. Being an excellent military engineer, he could be in excellent conditions without experiencing any hardships. Realizing the severity of the consequences of his decision, he rejected them. He led the underground in concentration camps. He died without bowing before the enemy.
Sidor Kovpak
Remaining in the occupied territory, in a short time he created from a small group a powerful partisan formation that terrified the Germans. Combat units were removed from the front to fight him, a huge amount of resources was spent, but Kovpak continued to smash the enemy, inflicting huge damage on manpower, equipment, rear communications and infrastructure.
In the framework of one article, it is simply impossible to mention all those millions of cases when heroism manifested itself in the Great Patriotic War. And this goal is not worth it. After all, what unites them all? The common thing in them is that none of the people who accomplished the feat planned it. Perhaps many of them did not even think about the possibility of its commission. But the time came, circumstances developed, the right moment arose - and they, without hesitation, stepped into Eternity. Without hesitation, not assessing the chances of a successful outcome, without thinking about the consequences, but exclusively at the call of the heart and the command of the soul, people did what was required of them at that moment. Many gave the most valuable that they had - their life.
Heroism in the war
Any war is a grief, loss, personal and state problem. There is a lot of heroism in the war, without it it is simply impossible to imagine a single armed conflict, and even more so the Great Patriotic War. And only the final outcome depended on each of its participants. And our ancestors did it! How did hundreds of years before them, how will they do after them.
We examined the question of what is heroism in war. The arguments presented here may seem naive, controversial to some, but I would like to hope that someone will agree with us and, possibly, supplement the topic: “Heroism in war: an essay on courage and self-sacrifice.”
Eternal glory to the heroes! Their feat is immortal. Their feat is priceless.