Thread by @akoz33

Here is a fragment of a powerful speech by the great historian of WWII Mark Solonin in which he is responding to the speech given by the President of Germany, on the anniversary of German invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941. The title of Solonin’s talk is

“Has the former FRG transformed into the former GDR?”



“As is usual among you in the West but somewhat unusual for us, you began your talk about these grandiose events of the great world war with a story about the fate of one oridnary, simple person.

You began the story with the fact that there was a Soviet soldier, Boris Popov, who met the war a few kilometers from Minsk, and on a sunny day he was resting together with his comrades on the grass, and then the first shots and the first explosions were heard.

Excuse me, but for about 20 years I occupy myself with the study of the hisotry of the first few days and weeks of the Soviet-German war and I feel obliged to tell you that your advisors who prepared this text for you have made some mistakes.

Boris Popov and his comrades were not a few kilometers to the west of Minsk, he was several hundred kilometers to the West of Minsk.

That is a fact beyond all doubt, because on the morning of 22 of June nobody bombed Minsk, not a single German airplane appeared there and certainly German artillery could not reach Minsk which is hundreds of kilometers from the border.

After that you say that he was in a mechanised unit, that they were three comrades and armored car that was lost, so one can roughly understand where Boris Popov could have been at that time, where he met the first hours of the war.

It could have been the 11th Mechanised Corps in the Grodno region, it could have been the 6th Mechanised Corps in the Białystok region, it could have been the 13th Mechnised Corps in the region of Bielsk or the 14th Mechanised Corps in the region of Kobryn.

It could also have been a tank regiment of the 6th Cavalry Corps which was located in the region of Łomża.
Grodno, Łomża, Białystok, Bielsk or Bielsk Podlaski in Polish, and Kobryn.
Where were these places?

I have not the slightest doubt that you know very well the political map of pre-war Europe so the answer is obvious: that was Poland. All these 4 places were within the internationally recognized borders of Poland.

(From me: today Grodno and Kobryn are in Belarus, the other two in Poland).