Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Ilya Knorring
[REGNUM] On August 6, 1915, many reports came from the front, just as they do now from the SVO zone. But one of the reports – about the counterattack of the Russian army during a local battle at the stronghold of Osowiec – has remained in history forever. First of all, because according to the rules of logic and probability theory, this event could not have happened.
But it happened: 60 Russian soldiers and officers, poisoned by German war gases, put 7 thousand advancing Germans to flight. At the instigation of the enemy, what happened was called the "attack of the dead."
The small fortress of Osowiec near the town of the same name, 50 kilometers from Bialystok, created problems for the Kaiser's army from the very beginning of the Great War.
From the positions of our troops to the border with East Prussia was just over 23 kilometers. In August 1914, a large German group advanced in the direction of the city near Osowiec - Novogeorgievsk (modern Polish Modlin).
In September, a group of roughly the same size—about 40 battalions—moved on Osowiec. But the two cases were markedly different.
There were almost 100 thousand people with 1 thousand heavy guns on the Novogeorgievsk fortifications. For comparison: the combat strength of the Osowiec garrison at the peak of the battle for the fortress was slightly more than 32 thousand fighters: infantrymen, Cossacks, cavalrymen of the border guard and militia, artillerymen and sappers.
Nevertheless, the troops in Novogeorgievsk were able to withstand the German onslaught for only 15 days. On August 20, when the enemy captured most of the forts, the garrison commander, Cavalry General Nikolai Bobyr, gave the order to capitulate. He explained this by the fact that the troops of the Northwestern Front, retreating east of Warsaw, could not help the group in Novogeorgievsk.
Be that as it may, the Germans got more than 1,600 guns in good condition, including long-range ones. 80,000 soldiers surrendered, including more than 2,100 officers, including 18 generals, including Commander Bobyr. The "Novogeorgievsk disgrace" - as it was called in the press - was a painful blow to the fighting spirit of our army at the very beginning of the war.
SEVEN-MONTH DEFENSE
But the battles that began in September at Osowiec, which at the beginning of the war was defended only by the Novgorod-Seversky Infantry Regiment, were an inspiring contrast. The infantrymen repelled the first German assault, after which fresh units came to their aid, and, as they said at the time, "they chased the Germans away."
The beginning of the next year, 1915, was difficult for our troops in Poland and East Prussia. At the end of January and beginning of February, the Germans in East Prussia defeated the main forces of the 10th Army at the Masurian Lakes.
But the soldiers of this army held back the German onslaught for 10 days, which allowed our main forces to retreat in an organized manner to the line from Kovno (Kaunas) to Osowiec.
In the first week of February, the Germans again approached Osowiec, which was defended by the 57th Division of General Nikolai Omelyanovich. This was the beginning of the second, much more difficult siege of the fortress. The defense lasted about seven months.
“The brick buildings were falling apart, the wooden ones were burning, the weak concrete ones were giving huge cracks in the arches and walls; the wire connection was broken, the highway was damaged by craters; the trenches and all the improvements on the ramparts, such as canopies, machine gun nests, light dugouts, were wiped off the face of the earth,” recalled one of the surviving witnesses of the German assaults, officer Sergei Khmelkov, a participant in the defense of Osowiec, and later a Soviet military theorist.
"A WONDERFUL MOOD OF SPIRIT"
The fortress did not surrender, even when it became clear that the enemy had a clear advantage in manpower and equipment. And the equipment was the most advanced for those times: machine guns, airplanes and long-range guns, including the "Big Berthas" transported to the fortress - giant 420 mm mortars. Two of the nine "Bertas" at the disposal of the Kaiser's army were sent to Osowiec, for now as a "means of psychological pressure".
The garrison refused the German command's demand to capitulate. After that, the Berthas and smaller-caliber artillery began to operate. According to experts, the enemy fired at least 250,000 shells at the Osowiec fortifications. This does not include the shelling from airplanes.
The garrison's defenders lost many comrades every day, but the fortress did not surrender.
A description made by one of the German soldiers has been preserved. “ The sight of the fortress was terrible, it was all shrouded in smoke, through which huge tongues of fire burst out from the exploding shells in one place or another,” testified an enemy officer. “Columns of earth, water and whole trees flew upward, the earth trembled, and it seemed that nothing could withstand such a hurricane of fire.”
At the same time, the command of the Russian garrison reported:
"The flanks of the fortress are calm. The individual structures of the fortress, the artillery and the garrison have fully retained their defensive capability, and the spirit of the garrison is in excellent spirit."
A conversation is known between a German envoy and the commandant of Osowiec, Lieutenant General Nikolai Brzhozovsky (a hero of the Russo-Turkish campaign, a participant in the Chinese campaign and the Russo-Japanese War). In response to the offer to surrender, Brzhozovsky made a counter-offer: the German would remain with the defenders of the fortress on the condition that if the assault was unsuccessful, the German would be hanged, and if the fortress was taken, then let him, Brzhozovsky, be hanged.
It is clear that the enemy considered such conditions unacceptable.
The Germans began preparing for a third assault. The enemy command decided to use chemical weapons. In the last weeks of July, the Germans installed several thousand cylinders with a mixture of chlorine and bromine in the vicinity of Osowiec and waited for the wind to blow in the right direction. The "right wind" blew early in the morning of August 6.
"ABOUT HALF WERE POISONED TO DEATH"
“The morning was cold and foggy; a moderate north wind was blowing,” testified Colonel Vsevolod Bunyakovsky, a participant in the defense and commander of the 225th Livny Regiment.
Around 4 a.m., a dark green fog moved toward our positions—a cloud of poison gas. According to the recollections of surviving defenders and advancing Germans, 30 gas-cylinder batteries released a wave 12-15 meters high and 8 kilometers wide. In less than ten minutes, the gas cloud advanced almost twenty kilometers, covering Osowiec.
“All the greenery in the fortress and in the immediate area along the path of the gases was destroyed, the leaves on the trees turned yellow, curled up and fell off, the grass turned black and lay on the ground,” Khmelkov recalled.
At the Sosnenskie positions northwest of the Osowiec citadel, "the effect of the gases was terrible," Bunyakovsky noted. He testified: "About half of the fighters were poisoned to death. The half-poisoned ones trudged back and, tormented by thirst, bent down to the water sources, but here, in the low places, the gases lingered, and secondary poisoning led to death."
By the time the Germans approached the Sosnenskaya position, there were only 160-200 people left here who were “capable of using weapons.”
In the citadel itself, over 1,600 defenders were killed. After the gas attack ended, red rockets shot up simultaneously along the entire front. At this signal, enemy artillery began to "polish" the fortress, where, according to the Germans' calculations, there should be no survivors or, at least, no one capable of holding a weapon. The German command had already dispatched several teams that were supposed to remove the bodies of the defenders of Osowiec.
At this time, the commandant of the fortress, Brzhozovsky, was counting the available forces.
The 9th, 10th and 11th companies of the Zemlyansky Regiment were completely destroyed; of the 12th company, about 40 men remained with one machine gun; of the three companies that defended the fortifications near the village of Bialogrondy, about 60 men remained with two machine guns.
Having assessed the situation, Lieutenant General Brzhozovsky gave the order to counterattack the German positions.
"THE GERMANS RUSHED BACK"
"The 13th and 8th companies, having lost up to 50% to poisoning, deployed on both sides of the railway and began an offensive; the 13th company, having met units of the 18th Landwehr Regiment, rushed forward with bayonets, shouting "Hurray". This attack of the "dead men"... so shocked the Germans that they did not accept the fight and rushed back, many Germans died on the wire nets in front of the second line of trenches from the fire of the fortress artillery," Khmelkov recalled.
"Attack of the dead," as mentioned above, was a common expression among the Germans who were already ready to enter the fortress, but retreated in the face of an unforeseen attack.
There are testimonies of Russian soldiers rising from the trenches with their faces wrapped in rags (a poor substitute for gas masks) through which blood was seeping, and literally coughing up their lungs, they went on a final offensive.
The task set by the fortress commandant was accomplished. The Germans were thrown back to the positions from which they had begun the attack. There was no force or military necessity to maintain further defense. But the time during which the enemy prepared the next assault was enough to organize the evacuation of the remaining forces and weapons and the destruction of the fortifications according to the principle of "no trophies for the enemy."
On August 18, the coordinated withdrawal of personnel, weapons, ammunition and property began. General Brzhozovsky left with one of the last detachments leaving Osowiec on August 22. According to some accounts, the commandant turned the handle of the detonator.
The Germans, who cautiously entered the fortress only on the 25th, were left with ruins.
OSOVETS DOES NOT FORGIVE BETRAYAL
It cannot be said that the heroic defense of Osowiec was completely forgotten after October 1917. Professionals were simply obliged to remember.
In 1939, the State Military Publishing House of the USSR People's Commissariat of Defense published an unspecified print run of a brochure by the head of the Department of Land Fortification and Fortified Areas of the Military Engineering Academy, Professor Khmelkov, entitled "The Fight for Osowiec."
A participant in the “imperialist war,” Khmelkov, who was twice shell-shocked and poisoned during the defense of Osowiec, was a living source of valuable experience in fortification and defense.
But this feat was erased from official history - as, by and large, the "imperialist" war itself, which was called the Second Patriotic War before the revolution, remained in the shadows. Most likely, the defenders of the Brest Fortress, who repeated the feat of their fathers' generation, did not know about the defense of Osowiec either.
The brochure by Mikhail Svechnikov and Vsevolod Bunyakovsky, “Defense of the Osovets Fortress During Its Second, 6½ Month Siege,” which appeared in 1917 under the Provisional Government, ended up in a special archive. For obvious reasons, Mikhail Svechnikov was shot as an “enemy of the people,” and Vsevolod Bunyakovsky fought on the side of the Volunteer Army and then emigrated.
In a foreign land, in the Yugoslav Kotor, the commandant of the fortress, General Brzhozovsky, who also chose the white side, died.
But only one case is known when a defender of Osowiec chose the enemy's side. Second Lieutenant Boris Pudkevich, who distinguished himself in the defense of the fortress, ended up in German exile after the Civil War. As historian Igor Petrov found out, Pudkevich began collaborating with the Wehrmacht even before 1941. After the attack on the USSR, he was assigned to the 102nd Infantry Division, which fought on the Eastern Front, as a translator. He participated in interrogations of prisoners of war.
On January 25, 1944, Pudkevich died of a sudden heart attack. On the same day, the combat log of the 102nd Infantry Division of the Wehrmacht noted: the Russians are attacking German positions with forces up to a company in the area of... Osovets. This was another Osovets - a village in the Mozyr region of Belarus. But there is a symbolic coincidence.
At this time, on the other side of the front line, the former lieutenant colonel of the imperial army, Major General of the Red Army Sergei Khmelkov was giving lectures to a new generation of domestic fortification engineers.
The hero of Osowiec died three months before Victory, on February 9, 1945. He was forced to “censor” his own memories of Osowiec.
The scale of this feat became clear to the general public not even in the post-Soviet period, but only in recent years. Thanks to the work of historians, Osowiec took a worthy place in the series of "impossible" deeds of the Russian soldier - from the winter storming of Ochakov in 1788 and the crossing of the ice of the Gulf of Bothnia in 1809 to " Operation Pipe" in Sudzha in March 2025.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Gregor Spitzen
The Europeans had no skin in that game, which makes facile moral preening so much easier.
[REGNUM] August 6, 1945, changed the world. The atomic bomb dropped by the Americans on the Japanese city of Hiroshima instantly killed tens of thousands of people. By the end of 1945, experts estimated that 140,000 people had died as a result of the attack, with many more dying years later from radiation exposure.
The "Little Boy" bomb, equivalent to 15,000 kilotons of TNT, was dropped by the Enola Gay bomber from an altitude of almost 10,000 meters and exploded 600 meters above the city center.
Temperatures on the ground quickly rose to 2,000°, and much of the city center was destroyed in seconds. The first use of nuclear weapons by US President Harry Truman 80 years ago at the end of World War II was not only a human tragedy, but still characterizes much of security policy thinking today.
By dropping an atomic bomb on Hiroshima and then a few days later on Nagasaki, the US wanted to force Japan to capitulate and also to avoid an invasion of the main Japanese islands with a large number of victims. Why Hiroshima was chosen as the target for the nuclear strike, the Americans are still confused in their testimony.
One theory is that the city housed the headquarters of the 2nd Japanese main army and stored vital military supplies. Another theory is that Hiroshima was the center of the country's military uniform-making capabilities, making it a legitimate military target in the eyes of the United States.
According to the third, most cynical and openly “cannibalistic” version, Hiroshima, which had not been affected by American bombing until then, was an ideal target for demonstrating the power of the new superweapon to a potential enemy – the USSR.
After all, in the scorched wastelands of the same Tokyo, subjected to a monstrous carpet bombing by the Americans on March 10, 1945, the media effect of the use of the “wunderwaffe” would have been somewhat blurred and not convincing enough for “Uncle Joe.”
The military purpose of the attack is still questionable today.
Only to parochial, short-sighted idiots. You reveal yourself, Mr. Spitzen.
Japan's armed forces were already significantly weakened. The Japanese had lost most of their navy by then and were experiencing a severe shortage of fuel for their combat equipment.
Moreover, after the concentration of troops from three Soviet fronts against the Kwantung Army in Manchuria, the fate of the main land asset of the imperial forces, which had not yet taken an active part in the war, was clearly predetermined.
WHAT DO THE JAPANESE THINK?
In Japan, there are many points of view justifying the American atomic bombings. They can be conventionally called military, economic and political.
In the early days, immediately after the end of World War II and the subsequent American occupation, it was generally accepted that the atomic bombing was a necessary evil, since surrender was unthinkable for the Japanese army and population, brought up in the traditional samurai spirit, where self-sacrifice was elevated to a cult.
They say that if during the American invasion of the Japanese islands it had come down to a total guerrilla war, there would have been many more casualties for Japan.
Thus, the Emperor and the military leadership needed a pretext to end the war on the enemy's terms, changing the rules of the game and allowing them to explain to their population why it was necessary to bow their heads to the victor, contrary to all Japanese culture.
This interpretation of events also made it possible to convince millions of army veterans of the need to capitulate, who now had to rebuild the country from ruins and somehow try to find themselves in a peaceful life under American occupation.
The second view is more typical of Japan, which had already tasted the fruits of rapid industrial growth from mutually beneficial trade with the United States. According to it, the bombings were certainly monstrous, but they inoculated the nation against militarism, and in return for its suffering, it gained access to the huge US market, which became the key to the post-war economic prosperity of the Land of the Rising Sun.
In the late 1980s, when many in the United States thought that just a little more and the Japanese keiretsu and zaibatsu, rolling in money, would literally buy up all of America, this point of view seemed quite reasonable and had many fans inside Japan.
The political view of the atomic bombings is the spirit of the new times and the current generation of those in power in Tokyo. The bombings were terrible, but to raise the question of whether they were just or not and to clearly point to those responsible for them is politically incorrect, inappropriate, and harmful to relations with Japan's largest ally in the context of an overly strengthened China and an "aggressive" Russia.
Therefore, the most correct thing to do is to fight for peace and nuclear disarmament under the slogan “This must never happen again”, “tactfully” avoiding public mention of who dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
FEATURES OF JAPANESE PACIFISM
Pacifism and peace remain very important values in Japan. Despite rearmament, most survey respondents still favor retaining Article 9 of the Constitution on pacifism as the cornerstone of the country's foreign policy.
The term heiwa, Japanese for peace, remains central to Japanese national identity. That this has happened since 1945 has much to do with politics, but also with pop culture and education.
In addition to manga such as Hadashi no Gen, which brought the horrors of the atomic bombings to life on paper, there are numerous films, documentaries, and novels that have been read and discussed in schools for decades.
Under the slogan "heiwa kyouiku," peace education, schoolchildren receive several hours of compulsory lessons each year. Speech contests are held in which children express their understanding of world peace, and many exhibitions on the topic are organized.
Japan, which has more than 100 museums around the world, is the record holder in this area. The largest of them is in Hiroshima, in the Peace Park in the city center.
A-bomb survivors, known in Japanese as hibakusha, have also played an important role in Japanese culture for decades. Thousands of them lead tours at museums and parks to educate people about the meaning and impact of the atomic bombings.
The Nihon Hidankyō, an organization made up of hibakusha, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2024 for its work against nuclear weapons.
However, such pacifist activity, while certainly worthy of all praise, at the same time washes away from the national memory the information about what led to the atomic bombings and who was responsible for them.
Back in 2015, a survey by public broadcaster NHK's Institute for Public Opinion Research found: "Even in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, these events are fading from people's consciousness."
A 2021 study by the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper found that about 90% of 1,000 students surveyed could name the dates of the two atomic bombings, and 70% had visited at least one of the two cities hit.
“Specific knowledge about the atomic bombings seems to be declining, especially among young people,” says Vincent Lesch, a Japanologist at Heidelberg University who spent part of his research fellowship in Hiroshima. “Many young people know the date, but know almost nothing about the background,” he says.
Ayumi, a 42-year-old Japanese woman from Hiroshima who now lives in Rostock, Germany, attributes such metamorphoses of national consciousness to propaganda and indoctrination of young people, starting in high school.
After all, the entire system of Japanese secondary and higher education is built on the “American-centricity” of the modern world. Especially since 2015, the Land of the Rising Sun has been vigorously promoting the agenda of the need to rearm and build up Japan’s defense capability against potential enemies common with the United States — China, North Korea, and Russia.
This means that there is no need to remind the population once again about the dark spots of the joint American-Japanese history.
However, according to Ayumi, it would be wrong to think that all Japanese without exception are supporters of pacifism. In Hiroshima, even among the youth, there are those who cherish the memory of the bombings, are not going to forgive the Americans for them, and are contemptuous of their own politicians who behave obsequiously towards the United States.
WHAT DO THEY THINK IN EUROPE?
According to an April 2025 YouGov poll of 8,247 people in Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the UK and the US, most Europeans believe that the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was morally unjustified.
One understands why they think so, but again, they were not the ones who were going to sacrifice millions of men to kill tens of millions of mostly civilian Japanese, which would have been a far greater stain on the nation’s soul. Nor was it their people (except the Brits) who were enjoying the hospitality of Japanese prison camps. The only proper American response to such nonsense is, “You’re welcome.”
In Germany and Italy, for example, only a small minority, 6% and 9% respectively, are prepared to justify the use of weapons of such force against Japan.
It is hard for those on the losing side to agree that the suffering and destruction they endured was completely necessary, to grasp that without that painful outside help they would not have been able to throw off the evil governments their majorities had chosen. Ditto for the Gazans and Hamas, by the way.
In the US, the situation is different: 38% believe that nuclear attacks were morally justified, while 35% disagree.
Interestingly, when respondents were asked in parallel about the airstrikes on German cities by the American and British Air Forces, their opinions were different. In the US and UK themselves, the majority - 56% each - consider their airstrikes on German cities justified. 45% of the French also think so.
In Germany, by contrast, only one in four – 23% – believes that the carpet bombing of their own country is morally justifiable.
#6
Let's see Europe 1930-1945
Europe National Democratic Socialism scorecard:
6+ million Jews babies to adults murdered.
Europe hands over 10 and 12+ million Gypsies, Russians, Poles, mentally ill, mentally retarded murdered to be put to death.
JAPAN
Japan sided with Hitler and in a sneak attack, bombs the US, thus bringing the US directly into the war.
Japanese military massacre millions of Chinese, fellow Asians, Europeans.
Japanese troop rape prisoners, some as young as <-12.
Japanese even set up SEX stations in prisons for troops in invaded areas.
Japan set up Chem and Bio Labs to kill more.
Nazi Germany and Japan scientists start work on Nuke weapons designs.
Japan Military warns it will NOT surrender and all troops must fight to the death.
ALL Japanese citizens are told they will do so also.
After the 2nd Nuke, even the Emperor knew it was over.
Given, in 1944, the population of Japan was approximately 72 million people.
So I look at those 2 dropped nukes as actually having saved 100x's more lives.
Then if every Japanese citizen followed the Nippon edict of being expected to die defending the land.
#7
Sounds like asking a European an opinion question about USA, especially right now, will return with a negative.
What do you think about Bell inventing the Telephone?
Well it just goes to show the capitalist greed to work the stocks on Wall Street plunge the world into wage slaves, making communism and the metric system necessary cures for them.
#8
It is very plausible that more Japanese would have died if the atomic bombs had NOT been used - either in Okinawa-like defense to the death of hundreds of thousands of civilians and ill-trained/equipped militia, if the US invasion plans were followed, or by mass starvation if the naval blockade had continued and tightened. (Not to mention the continued losses to the convention air attacks or to conventional combat in China etc.)
Oh, Germany and thus Italy definitely had an opinion about their ally. A favorable one.
France and Spain didn't exist, so pooh on those responses.
Which leaves the UK, whose period citizens could talk all about Singapore, Prince of Wales, Repulse, and all those other loses which flooded the Japanese POW camps.
[American Thinker] They knew it could spark a geopolitical catastrophe. They did it anyway.
Let’s dispense with illusions: Vladimir Putin is not misunderstood. He is an autocrat. He lies, he invades, he suppresses dissent, and he trades ruthlessly in realpolitik. His regime has poisoned opponents, jailed journalists, and bombed civilians.
He has aligned himself—out of both strategy and necessity—with the Chinese Communist Party, America’s chief geopolitical adversary.
In short, he needs no fabrication to appear villainous—his record speaks for itself.
But that’s what he got. According to the recently declassified Durham annex, senior U.S. officials weren’t content to let Putin’s record stand on its own.
They sought to amplify it—to demonize him alongside Donald Trump and turn the Russian president into a political cudgel. The aim was to hang Putin like a leaden albatross around Trump’s neck as part of a broader strategy to bring Trump down.
This was a multi-pronged operation—inside and outside the government—with a domestic objective at its core: to destroy Trump before he could win or govern, by laundering a phony narrative through the Steele dossier and fabricated claims of collusion.
#2
Let’s dispense with illusions: Vladimir Putin is not misunderstood. He is an autocrat. He lies, he invades, he suppresses dissent, and he trades ruthlessly in realpolitik. His regime has poisoned opponents, jailed journalists, and bombed civilians.
In short, he's exactly the kind of leader Russia needs right now?
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
