The story is like this.

My grandfather knew one veteran, grandfather Vanya. One day he and the men and this grandfather Vanya were sitting, drinking on May 9, celebrating the holiday. And grandfather Vanya, already quite drunk, says seriously: “Right now I’ll tell you, guys, how I “died” in the war.” A story from his perspective.

Believe it or not, believe it or not, but I’ll tell you what I saw. I had my first fight, I was 19 then. Bullets are whistling, you can’t raise your head, and the battalion commander shouts: “Attack!” Somehow I got out and ran after everyone. I’m running, yelling at the top of my lungs: “Hurray!” It doesn’t seem so scary when you’re yelling. From left to right, ours are falling... And I can already see the enemy’s trench. I pushed forward while running... and then it was as if someone poked me in the chest with their fist - just like that, and immediately my chest felt cold. I fell and was surprised: who hit me, there didn’t seem to be a German nearby. He touched his chest and his hand was covered in blood. “Does that mean it hurt me?” I wanted to jump up, but there’s no way, my arms and legs don’t obey me, I just lie with my head and turn in all directions. Then I somehow stopped hearing (even though everything around me was screaming and thumping), it was difficult to breathe, my eyes were closing. Well, I think I’ll lie down for now; if I don’t die, I’ll get up. And he seemed to fall asleep.

Then I suddenly realized that I was already on my feet. I think: “Oh, he’s alive, thank God.” I looked around - it was quieter, ours were visible somewhere in the distance, which meant that the Fritz had been knocked out of the trenches and were being driven further. Let's catch up with our guys. What about the rifle? I see someone of ours is lying next to him, his head is covered in blood. Well, I picked up his rifle and ran... And then, guys, believe it or not... I’m running, but there’s no rifle in my hands. Although I took it. Well, that means I hurried, came back, grabbed it, but I couldn’t take the rifle. I grab it again and again, but I can’t take it, somehow my hand passes by and that’s it. I didn't understand anything. I sat down on the ground and sat, what I was waiting for was unclear.

Here our group is walking, led by an officer, they are going far, but I see lieutenant shoulder straps (I immediately began to see something very sharply). They're looking for the living, or something. I run to them, yelling: “Brothers!..” But they don’t hear. I ran up to them, saluted, and said: “Comrade Lieutenant, I’m alive, only wounded.” And they, men... they, such bastards, pass through me. I got angry, let's catch up, grab them by the shoulders. And again my hand is like holding a rifle, only it passes through the air, but I can’t touch them. And so, you know, just half a centimeter is not enough to touch, and I can’t overcome this half a centimeter. I looked at myself: yes, I’m the same, just looked closer - I also stand, as it were, half a centimeter above the ground, that is, not like everyone else. I felt such loneliness... I have never been so alone. Well, it turns out that it was me who died. Since the living don't notice. What should you do when you die? Is this what they teach? Yes, I was a Komsomol member, we were taught to live and not die. Here our people are coming again, already in hundreds, I also yelled at them a little, but then I despaired, these people don’t see or hear either. I felt bitter and bitter. I remembered all my relatives: my sister Masha, my father, my mother... And just thinking about my mother, I looked, and she was standing there, everyone was walking, and she was standing, looking at me. Not old and somehow, I don’t know... all bright, as if overjoyed. Is she following me, or what? I tell her:

Mom, where are you from?

Look at you, Vanya.

Am I dead, or what?

No, you still have to get married.

We buried you, how are you... alive?

But she didn’t say anything, she just looked at me like, “You can see for yourself that she’s alive.” Then she turned and followed the line of ours, I followed her, but she was no longer there, as if she had disappeared into these overcoats of ours. I wandered across the field. I look - our company is sitting, talking, smoking. Kolka, my sidekick, is there. He was silent, silent and said:

Where is Vanya, alive or not?

And one says to Kolka:

That’s how he was killed, there he lies near the hillock.

Mysterious mysteries of the Second World War

Sometimes during a war such strange and contradictory events occur that they are difficult to believe. Especially considering that the archives are still classified and there is no access to them. What kind of secrets does the history of those years keep, from the point of view of the allies of the USSR?
Let's try to figure it out.

The Mystery of Netaji's Death

Subhas Chandra Bose, also known as Netaji, is a Bengali by birth and one of the leaders of the Indian independence movement. Today Bose is revered in India on a par with Nehru and Gandhi. To fight the British colonialists, he collaborated with the Germans and then with the Japanese. He headed the collaborationist pro-Japanese administration “Azad Hind” (“Free India”), which he proclaimed “the government of India.” From the Allies' point of view, Netaji was a very dangerous traitor. He communicated with both German and Japanese leaders, but at the same time was on friendly terms with Stalin.

During his life, Bos had to run a lot from various foreign intelligence services, he hid from British surveillance, was able to change his identity and begin building his Empire of Revenge. Much in Bose’s life remains a mystery, but historians still cannot find an answer to the question - whether he died or is quietly living out his life somewhere in Bengal. According to the officially accepted version, the plane on which Bos tried to escape to Japan in 1945 suffered a plane crash. It seems that his body was cremated, and the urn with the ashes was transported to Tokyo to the Renkoji Buddhist Temple. Both before and now there are many people who do not believe in this story. So much so that they even analyzed the ashes and reported that the ashes belonged to a certain Ichiro Okura, a Japanese official.

It is believed that Bos lived out his life somewhere in strict secrecy. The Indian government admits that they have about forty secret files on Bose, all sealed, and they refuse to divulge the contents. It is said that the release will have detrimental consequences for India's international relations. In 1999, one file surfaced: it was related to the location of Netaji and the subsequent investigation that took place in 1963. However, the government refused to comment on this information.

Many still hope that one day they will be able to find out what really happened to Netaji, but this is definitely not going to happen anytime soon. The National Democratic Union in 2014 refused a request to release Bose's classified materials. The government is still afraid to publish even those documents that have been declassified as secret. According to official information, this is due to the fact that the information contained in the documents could still harm India's relations with other countries.

Battle of Los Angeles: Air defense against UFOs

Just don't laugh. Hoax or mass psychosis? Call it what you want, but on the night of February 25, 1942, all Los Angeles air defense services bravely - and absolutely unsuccessfully - fought a UFO.

“It happened in the early morning hours of February 25, 1942; just three months after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. The US has just entered the Second world war and the armed forces were on high alert when the attack occurred over the California skies. Witnesses reported seeing a large, round object glowing pale orange in the skies of Culver City and Santa Monica, along the entire Pacific coast."

Sirens wailed and searchlights began scanning the sky over Los Angeles, and more than 1,400 shells from anti-aircraft guns pelted the mysterious object, but it, calmly moving across the night sky, disappeared from view. No aircraft were shot down, and in fact, no satisfactory explanation has ever been found. The Army's official statement was that "unidentified aircraft" had allegedly entered Southern California airspace. But later the secretary Navy US Frank Nose canceled the reports and called the incident a “false alarm.”

Die Glocke - Nazi bell

Work on Die Glocke (translated from German as “bell”) began in 1940, and was managed from the “SS brain center” at the Skoda factory in Pilsen by designer Hans Kammler. Kammler's name is closely associated with one of the Nazi organizations involved in the development different types“miracle weapons” - by the Ahnenerbe occult institute. At first, the “miracle weapon” was tested in the vicinity of Breslau, but in December 1944, a group of scientists was transported to an underground laboratory (with a total area of ​​10 km²!) inside the Wenceslas mine.
The documents describe Die Glocke as "a huge bell made of solid metal, about 3 m wide and approximately 4.5 m high." This device contained two counter-rotating lead cylinders filled with an unknown substance codenamed Xerum 525. When turned on, the Die Glocke illuminated the shaft with a pale purple light.

In the throes of the Reich, the Nazis seized every chance, hoping for a technological miracle that could change the course of the war. At that time, vague hints of some unusual engineering developments began to be found in documents. Polish journalist Igor Witkowski conducted his own investigation and wrote the book “The Truth about Wunderwaffe”, from which the world learned about the top-secret project “Die Glocke”. Later, a book by British journalist Nick Cook, “The Hunt for Point Zero,” appeared, which explored similar matters.

Witkovsky was absolutely sure that Die Glocke was intended to be a breakthrough in the field of space technology, and was intended to generate fuel for hundreds of thousands of flying saucers. More precisely, disc-shaped aircraft with a crew of one or two people. They say that at the end of April 1945, the Nazis planned to use these devices to carry out Operation “Spear of Satan” - to strike Moscow, London and New York. About 1,000 finished “UFOs” were allegedly subsequently captured by the Americans - in underground factories in the Czech Republic and Austria. Is it true? Maybe. After all, the US National Archives declassified documents from 1956, which confirm that the development of the “flying saucer” was carried out by the Nazis. Norwegian historian Gudrun Stensen believes that at least four of Kammler's flying disks were "captured" Soviet army from the factory in Breslau, however, Stalin did not pay enough attention to the “plates”, since he was more interested in the nuclear bomb.

There are even more exotic theories about the purpose of Die Glocke: according to the US writer Henry Stevens, author of the book “Hitler's Weapons - Still Secret!”, the bell was not a spacecraft, it worked on red mercury, and was intended for time travel .
Polish intelligence services neither confirm nor deny Witkowski’s research: the interrogation protocols of SS Gruppenführer Sporrenberg are still classified. Vitkovsky insisted on this version: Hans Kammler took the “Bell” to America, and no one knows where it is now.

Nazi "gold train"

World War II documents prove that in 1945, during the retreat, the Nazis removed from Breslau, Germany (now Wroclaw, Poland) an armored train loaded with valuables and tons of gold confiscated from the governments of occupied countries and seized from people who ended their lives in concentration camps. The train was 150 meters long and could contain up to 300 tons of gold!

Allied forces recovered some of the Nazi gold at the end of the war, but most of it, apparently loaded onto a train, disappeared into oblivion. The train was carrying precious cargo from Wroclaw to Walbrzych, however, it disappeared on the way, under still unclear circumstances - as it fell into the ground. And since 1945, no one has seen the train again, and all attempts to find it have been unsuccessful.

In the vicinity of Walbrzych there is an old tunnel system built by the Nazis, in one of which, according to local legends, the missing train stands. Local residents believe that the train may be located in an abandoned tunnel that existed on railway between Walbrzych and the town of Swiebodzice. The entrance to the tunnel is most likely somewhere under an embankment near the Wałbrzych station. From time to time, this same Walbrzych begins to feel feverish from the next message about the discovery of treasures from the time of the Third Reich.

Specialists of the Mining and Metallurgical Academy named after. Stanislav Staszic in 2015 seemed to have completed the operation to search for the ghostly “golden train”. Apparently, the search engines were unable to make any grand discoveries. Although during the work they used modern technology, for example, a cesium magnetometer, which measures the level magnetic field land.
According to the laws of Poland, if a treasure is discovered, it must be handed over to the state.

Although what a treasure this is... clearly part of the captured property! The chief custodian of Polish antiquities, Piotr Zuchowski, recommended refraining from searching for treasures on his own, since the missing train could be mined. So far, Russian, Polish and Israeli media are closely monitoring the search for the Nazi armored train. Theoretically, each of these countries can lay claim to part of the find.

Airplanes are ghosts

Phantoms of crashed planes are a sad and beautiful legend. Specialists in anomalous phenomena know of many cases of aircraft appearing in the sky, which date back to the time of the last war. They are seen in the skies over British Sheffield, and over the notorious Peak District in the north of Derbyshire (more than five dozen planes crashed there), and in other places.

Richard and Helen Jason were among the first to report such a story when they spotted a World War II bomber in the skies of Derbyshire. They remembered that he was flying very low, but surprisingly quietly, silently, without making a single sound. And the ghost just disappeared at some point. Richard, being an Air Force veteran, believes it was an American Bi-24 Liberator bomber with 4 engines.

They say that such phenomena are observed in Russia. As if in clear weather in the sky above the village of Yadrovo, Volokolamsk region, you can hear the characteristic sounds of a low-flying plane, after which you can see a slightly blurred silhouette of a burning Messerschmitt trying to land.

The story of the disappearance of Raoul Wallenberg

The story of the life, and especially the death, of Raoul Gustav Wallenberg is one of those that is interpreted completely differently by Western and domestic sources. They agree on one thing - he was a hero who saved thousands of Hungarian Jews from the Holocaust. Tens of thousands. He sent them so-called protective passports of Swedish citizens awaiting repatriation to their homeland, and thereby saved them from concentration camps.
By the time Budapest was liberated, these people were already safe, thanks to papers from Wallenberg and his associates. Raoul also managed to convince several German generals not to carry out Hitler's orders to transport Jews to death camps and he prevented the destruction of the Budapest ghetto in last days before the advance of the Red Army. If this version is correct, then Wallenberg managed to save at least 100 thousand Hungarian Jews! But what happened to Raul himself after 1945 is obvious to Western historians (rotted by the bloody KGB in the dungeons of the Lubyanka), but for ours it is not so clear.

According to the most common version, after the capture of Budapest by Soviet troops on January 13, 1945, Wallenberg, along with his driver, was detained by a Soviet patrol in the building of the International Red Cross (according to another version, he himself came to the location of the 151st Infantry Division and asked for a meeting with the Soviet command; according to the third version, he was arrested by the NKVD in his apartment). After this, he was sent to the commander of the 2nd Ukrainian Front, Malinovsky. But on the way he was again detained and arrested by military counterintelligence officers SMERSH. According to another version, after his arrest at Wallenberg’s apartment, he was sent to headquarters Soviet troops. On March 8, 1945, Budapest Radio Kossuth, which was under Soviet control, reported that Raoul Wallenberg had died during street fighting in Budapest.

Western media consider it proven that Raoul Wallenberg was arrested and transported to Moscow, where he was kept in the internal MGB prison at Lubyanka. The Swedes tried unsuccessfully for many years to find out the fate of the arrested man. In August 1947, Vyshinsky officially stated that Wallenberg was not in the USSR and that the Soviet authorities knew nothing about him. But in February 1957, Moscow no less officially informed the Swedish government that Wallenberg had died on July 17, 1947 in a cell in the Lubyanka prison from a myocardial infarction. No autopsy was performed, and the story about the heart attack did not convince either Raul’s relatives or the world community.

Moscow and Stockholm agreed to investigate the case within the framework of a bilateral commission, but in 2001 the commission concluded that the search had reached a dead end and ceased to exist. There are unconfirmed reports that refer to Wallenberg as “Prisoner No. 7,” who was interrogated in July 1947, a week (!) after he allegedly died of a heart attack.

Several documentaries and feature films have been made about the fate of Raoul Wallenberg, but none of them reveals the mystery of his death.

The Fuhrer's Missing Globe

“The Fuhrer's Globe” is one of the giant models of the “Columbus globe”, released for leaders of states and enterprises in two limited batches in Berlin in the mid-1930s (and in the second batch, adjustments were already made to the world map). The same Hitler globe was commissioned for the headquarters of the Reich Chancellery by the architect Albert Speer. The globe was huge; it can be seen in the newsreel of the opening of the new Reich Chancellery building in 1939. Where exactly that globe went from the headquarters is unknown. At auctions here and there, from time to time another “Hitler’s globe” is sold, thousands for 100 euros.

American World War II veteran John Barsamian found the globe a few days after the surrender of Nazi Germany, in the bombed alpine residence of the Fuhrer, the Eagle's Nest, in the mountains above Berchtesgaden in Bavaria. The American veteran also sold at auction a package of military documents from those years that allowed him to take the globe to the United States. The permit states the following: “One globe, language - German, origin - Eagle's Nest residence.

Experts note that in different collections there are several globes that allegedly belonged to Hitler. However, the globe found by Barsamyan has the best chance of being considered real: its authenticity is confirmed by a photograph showing Lieutenant Barsamyan with a globe in his hands - in the Eagle's Nest.

Once upon a time, Charlie Chaplin in his film “The Great Dictator” showed Hitler’s globe as his main and favorite accessory. But Hitler himself hardly particularly valued the globe, because not a single photograph of Hitler with its background has survived (which, in general, is pure speculation and assumptions).

Before the discovery of Barsamyan, the Western media categorically stated that the globe was stolen personally by Lavrentiy Beria, apparently believing that he had captured not only Berlin, but the entire Earth. Well, we cannot deny that it is likely that the Fuhrer’s personal globe still stands in one of the offices at Lubyanka.

Treasures of General Rommel

Nicknamed the “Desert Fox,” Field Marshal Erwin Rommel was undoubtedly the outstanding commander of the Third Reich; he confidently won the First World War, his name inspired horror and fear in the Italians and British. In World War II he was less fortunate: the Reich sent him to lead military operations in North Africa. SS-Sturmbannführer Schmidt led a special “division-Schutzkommando” in the Middle East: following in the footsteps of Rommel’s army, this team robbed museums, banks, private collections, libraries and jewelry stores in cities North Africa. They mainly took gold, currency, antiques and art treasures. The looting continued until Rommel's corps began to suffer defeats and the Germans began to retreat, suffering losses under continuous British bombing.

In April 1943, the allies of the anti-Hitler coalition landed in Casablanca, Oran and Algiers, and pressed the Germans to Cape Bon Peninsula, along with all the looted belongings (none of this, by the way, is “Rommel’s gold”, rather these are African SS treasures) . Schmidt found an opportunity to load valuables into 6 containers and went out to sea on ships towards Corsica. Further opinions differ. They say that the SS men reached Corsica, but American aircraft swooped in and destroyed them. There is also the most beautiful version that Sturmbannführer Schmidt managed to hide or drown treasures near the Corsican coast, which was replete with hiding places, grottoes and underwater caves.

"Rommel's treasures" have been searched for all these years and are still being sought. At the end of 2007, Briton Terry Hodgkinson said that he knew exactly where to dig - at the bottom of the sea at a distance of just under a nautical mile from the Corsican city of Bestia. However, so far nothing happened and no treasure was found.

Foo fighters are UFOs

The term Foo Fighters is taken from the slang of Allied pilots - this is how they called unidentified flying objects and strange atmospheric phenomena that they saw in the skies over Europe and the Pacific Ocean.

Coined by the 415th Tactical Fighter Squadron, the term "Foo Fighters" was subsequently officially adopted by the US military in November 1944. Pilots flying at night over Germany began reporting sightings of fast-moving luminous objects following their aircraft. They have been described in various ways: usually as balls of red, orange or white who performed complex maneuvers and then suddenly disappeared.

According to the pilots, the objects followed the planes and generally behaved as if they were being controlled by someone, but did not show hostility; It was not possible to break away from them or shoot them down. Reports about them appeared so often that such objects received given name- foo fighters, or, less commonly, kraut fireballs. The military took observations of these objects seriously, as they suspected that they were a secret weapon of the Germans. But it later turned out that German and Japanese pilots had observed similar objects.

January 15, 1945 Time magazine published a material called "Foo Fighter", which reported that US Air Force fighters had been chasing "fireballs" for more than a month. After the war, a group was created to study such phenomena, which proposed several possible explanations: it could be electrostatic phenomena similar to St. Elmo's fire, or optical illusions. In general, there is an opinion that if the term “flying saucers” had already been coined then, in 1943-1945, foo fighters would have fallen into this category.

Where did the Bloody Flag go?

The Blutfahne or "Blood Flag" is the first Nazi shrine to appear after the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch in Munich (a failed takeover attempt state power, undertaken by the National Socialist Workers' Party led by Hitler and General Ludendorff; they and about 600 supporters were defeated in the Munich beer pub "Bürgerbräukeller" where the Bavarian Prime Minister was giving a speech).

Approximately 16 Nazis died, many were wounded, and Hitler was arrested and convicted of treason. By the way, he spent his time in Landsberg prison under very lenient conditions, and it was there that most of his main book was written.
The Nazis who died during the Beer Hall Putsch were later declared martyrs, and the events themselves were declared the National Revolution. The flag under which they marched (and which, according to official version, dropped drops of the blood of the “martyrs”), was later used in the “blessing” of party banners: at party congresses in Nuremberg, Adolf Hitler attached new flags to the “sacred” banner. It was believed that its touch to other flags endowed them with divine power, and SS officers swore allegiance exclusively to this banner. The "Bloody Flag" even had a keeper - Jacob Grimminger.

The flag was last seen in October 1944, during one of Himmler's ceremonies. It was initially believed that the Allies destroyed the flag during the bombing of Munich. No one knows what happened to him next: whether he was saved and taken out of the country, or whether he was thrown to the walls of the mausoleum in Moscow in 1945. The fate of Jacob Grimminger, unlike the “Bloody Flag,” is known to historians. He not only survived the war, but also took up a minor post as a representative of the city administration in Munich.

Ghost of Pearl Harbor - P-40

One of the most intriguing ghost planes of World War II was the P-40 fighter that crashed near Pearl Harbor. Doesn't sound too mysterious, does it? Only this plane was later seen in the sky - a year after the Japanese attack.

On December 8, 1942, American radar detected a plane heading directly for Pearl Harbor from Japan. Two fighter jets were tasked with checking and quickly intercepting the mysterious aircraft. It was a P-40 fighter that had been used in the defense of Pearl Harbor the year before. What was even stranger was that the plane was on fire and the pilot was apparently killed. The P-40 dived to the ground and crashed.

Rescue teams were sent immediately, but they were unable to find the pilot - the cabin was empty. There was no sign of the pilot! But they found a flight diary, which reported that the specified plane was on the island of Mindanao, 1300 miles away. Pacific Ocean. But if he was the wounded defender of Pearl Harbor, how did he survive on the island for a year, how did he lift the crashed plane into the sky? And where did he go? What happened to his body? This remains one of the most baffling mysteries.

Who were the 17 British from Auschwitz?

In 2009, historians conducted excavations on the territory of the Nazi death camp Auschwitz. They discovered a strange list that contained the names of 17 British soldiers. Opposite the names there were some signs - ticks. Nobody knows why this list was created. There were also several written on the paper german words, but these words did not help in solving the mystery (“since then,” “never,” and “now”).

There are several assumptions about the purpose of this list and who these soldiers were. The first assumption is that British prisoners of war were used as skilled workers. Many were housed in Auschwitz in camp E715, where they were assigned to lay cables and pipes. Another theory is that the names of British soldiers on the list are the names of traitors who worked for the CC unit during the war - they may have been part of the secret British Schutzstaffel (SS) brigade that fought for the Nazis against the Allies. None of these theories have been proven to date.

Who betrayed Anne Frank?

The diary of a 15-year-old Jewish girl, Anne Frank, made her name famous throughout the world. In July 1942, with the beginning of the deportation of Jews from the Netherlands, the Frank family (father, mother, older sister Margot and Anna) took refuge in a secret room in the office of their father's company in Amsterdam, at 263 Prinsengracht, along with four other Dutch Jews. They hid in this shelter until 1944. Friends and colleagues delivered food and clothing to the Franks at great risk to their lives.

Anna kept a diary from June 12, 1942 to August 1, 1944. At first she wrote for herself, but in the spring of 1944 the girl heard on the radio a speech by the Minister of Education of the Netherlands: all evidence of the period of occupation should become public property. Impressed by his words, Anna decided after the war to publish a book based on her diary. And from that moment she began to write not only for herself, but thinking about future readers.
In 1944, the authorities received a denunciation of a group of Jews hiding, and the Dutch police with the Gestapo came to the house where the Frank family was hiding. Behind a bookcase they found the door where the Frank family had been hiding for 25 months. Everyone was immediately arrested.

Informant who committed anonymous phone call, who was brought by the Gestapo, but has not yet been identified - the informer’s name was not in the police reports. History offers us the names of three alleged informers: Tonny Ahlers, Willem van Maaren and Lena van Bladeren-Hartoch, all of whom knew the Franks, and each of them could have feared arrest for failure to inform. But historians do not have an exact answer as to who betrayed Anne Frank and her family.

Anna and her sister were sent to forced labor at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in northern Germany. Both sisters died from a typhoid epidemic that broke out in the camp in March 1945, just weeks before the camp was liberated. Their mother died in Auschwitz in early January 1945.
Otto, Anna's father, was the only one in the family to survive the war. He remained in Auschwitz until its liberation by Soviet troops on January 27, 1945.

After the war, Otto received from a family friend, Miep Heath, who helped them hide, Anna’s notes that she had collected and saved. Otto Frank published the first edition of these notes in 1947 in the original language under the title “In the Back Wing” (a shortened version of the diary, with notes of a personal and censorship nature). The book was published in Germany in 1950. The first Russian edition, entitled “The Diary of Anne Frank,” in a magnificent translation by Rita Wright-Kovaleva, was published in 1960.

the Amber Room

Treasures that have mysteriously disappeared are doubly attractive. The Amber Room - “the eighth wonder of the world” - has always been the object of desire for rulers and kings. They say that Peter I literally begged her from Frederick during a meeting in November 1716, when an alliance between Russia and Prussia was concluded. Peter I immediately boasted of the gift in a letter to Catherine: “... he gave me... the Yantarny office, which has long been desired.” The Amber Cabinet was packed and transported with great precautions from Prussia to St. Petersburg in 1717. Amber mosaic panels were installed in the lower hall of the People's Chambers in the Summer Garden.

In 1743, Empress Elizabeth Petrovna instructed Master Martelli, under the supervision of Chief Architect Rastrelli, to expand the office. There were clearly not enough Prussian panels for the large hall, and Rastrelli introduced gilded wooden carvings, mirrors and mosaic paintings of agate and jasper into the decoration. And by 1770, under the supervision of Rastrelli, the office was transformed into the famous Amber Room of the Catherine Palace in Tsarskoe Selo, adding in size and luxury.

The Amber Room was rightfully considered the pearl of the summer residence Russian emperors in Tsarskoe Selo. And this famous masterpiece disappeared without a trace during World War II. Well, not completely without a trace.
The Germans purposefully went to Tsarskoe Selo for the Amber Room, it seems that even before the start of the war, Alfred Rohde promised Hitler to return the treasure to historical homeland. There was no time to dismantle and evacuate the room, and the invaders took it to Königsberg. After 1945, when the Nazis were driven out of Königsberg by Soviet troops, traces of the Amber Room were lost.

Some of its fragments pop up around the world from time to time - for example, one of the four Florentine mosaics was found. It was believed that the room burned down in the ruins of Königsberg Castle. It is believed that the room was discovered by special units of the American army searching for art objects stolen by the Nazis, and secretly taken to the United States, after which it fell into the hands of private collectors. It was also assumed that the Amber Room was sunk along with the steamship Wilhelm Gustloff, or it could have been on the cruiser Prinz Eugen transferred to the United States as part of reparations.

During the Soviet Union, they searched carefully for the Amber Room, and the search was supervised by the State Security Committee. But they didn’t find it. And three decades later, in the 1970s, it was decided to start restoring the Amber Room from scratch. Mainly Kaliningrad amber was used. And today an accurately recreated copy of the lost treasure can be seen in Tsarskoye Selo, in the Catherine Palace. Perhaps she is even more beautiful than before.

Link No. 19

This is perhaps the most widely circulated of the mystical stories of the Second World War. Flight 19 of five Avenger torpedo bombers, which carried out a training flight on December 5, 1945, which ended in the loss of unclear circumstances all five vehicles, as well as the PBM-5 Martin Mariner rescue seaplane sent to search for them. This miracle is considered one of the strangest and most unusual not only in the history of US Navy aviation, but also in the history of all world aviation.

This happened a few months after the end of the war. On December 5, 1945, as part of flight No. 19, a flight of 4 Avenger torpedo bombers under the control of corps pilots Marine Corps The US and Fleet Air Arm, which were undergoing a retraining program for this type of aircraft, led by the fifth torpedo bomber, piloted by Marine Corps instructor pilot Lt. Charles Carroll Taylor, had to perform a routine exercise from the retraining program course. “Navigation Exercise No. 1” was a typical one - it involved flying over the ocean along a route with two turns and training bombing. The route was a standard one, and this and similar routes in the Bahamas area were systematically used for naval pilot training throughout World War II. The crew was experienced, the flight leader, Lieutenant Taylor, had flown about 2,500 hours on this type of torpedo bomber, and his cadets were also not beginners - they had a total flight time of 350 to 400 hours, of which at least 55 hours on “Avengers” of this type.

The planes took off from the Navy base in Fort Lauderdale and successfully completed training task, but then some nonsense begins. The flight goes off course, Taylor turns on the emergency radio beacon and finds himself in direction finding - within a radius of 100 miles from the point with coordinates 29°15′ N. w. 79°00′ W d. Then they change course several times, but cannot understand where they are: Lieutenant Taylor decided that the flight’s planes were above Gulf of Mexico(It seems that this error was a consequence of his belief that the islands over which they flew were the Florida Keys archipelago, and a flight to the northeast should lead them to the Florida Peninsula). The fuel runs out, Taylor gives the command to splash down, and... there was never any more news from them. The PBM-5 Martin “Mariner” rescue seaplane that took off found no one and nothing, and itself also disappeared.

Later, a large-scale operation was carried out to search for the missing aircraft, involving three hundred army and navy aircraft and twenty-one ships. National Guard units and volunteers scoured the Florida coast, Florida Keys and Bahamas for debris. The operation was terminated without success after a few weeks, and all the lost crews were officially declared missing.

The Navy investigation initially placed the blame on Lt. Taylor; however, they later changed the official report and the missing link was described as occurring for "unknown reasons." Neither the bodies of the pilots, nor one aircraft were never found. This story seriously added to the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle legend.

These 15 facts are considered mystical and mysterious by the media of those countries that during World War II called themselves allies of the USSR. Whether to share their views on that war and their ability to list many facts, but never mention the USSR as the winner of Nazism, is a personal matter for everyone. What is certain is that any war gives rise to myths and legends that will survive for many more generations.

In life there is always a place for the mysterious and inexplicable. Sometimes mysterious things happened in war, including the Great Patriotic War.

Soldier's Premonition

Stories about manifestations of the unknown in Soviet time, to put it mildly, were not welcome. This is understandable. The USSR was considered an atheistic state, and the fight against the “religious dope” was carried out uncompromisingly. Therefore, in the memoirs of veterans of the Great Patriotic War there is no hint of mysticism. The only thing they dared to mention were all sorts of premonitions. For example, there was a story about a soldier who suddenly became thoughtful, slept poorly, said goodbye to his friends, and the next day he was killed. It often happens in war when a front-line soldier, recalling his experience, is sincerely surprised. Like, he was sitting quietly in the dugout - and suddenly, as if someone ordered: “Get out of here!” Well, he listened. And before he had even walked a few dozen steps, a bomb or shell hit the dugout.

Direct hit in the dugout.

Yakov Iosifovich Prishutov, a native of the village of Russkaya Builovka, Pavlovsk district, spoke about something similar Voronezh province. In 1944, during the liberation of Belarus, he served in the 1183rd Infantry Regiment of the 356th Infantry Division. One day, moving forward in battle, our units stopped for a rest in a two-story house. Naturally, it was impossible to accommodate everyone there. On the first floor, various headquarters services were located, and on the second, four sappers were working on a German anti-tank mine.

Yakov Iosifovich recalled that he stood next to them and exchanged a few words. Although, being the commander of a submachine gunner squad, he didn’t know anything about mine clearance. But it's interesting! And then it was as if something pushed him. Prishutov, without hesitation, went down the stairs and went out into the courtyard. Before he had time to move to a safe distance, a deafening explosion was heard from behind.

Fantastic luck

The former chairman of the Petropavlovsk village council (the village of Petropavlovka, Liskinsky district) had even more fantastic luck in the war Voronezh region) Grigory Tikhonovich Turusov. At the front, such people were often called charmed. Just look at the pages of his front-line diaries, which were made available to the general public by the famous Pavlovsk local historian Pavel Andrianovich Visloguzov. Let's take records for only three months - from February to April 1944, when Guard Captain Turusov was in the position of deputy battalion commander of the 56th Guards Rifle Regiment of the 15th Guards Rifle Division.

Anti-personnel mine - petal.

In February, while mining the front line, an anti-personnel mine exploded right in the hands of Grigory Tikhonovich. The mittens were torn to pieces, but the hands remained intact. And not the slightest cut! A month later, he was hit by air raids three times in one day. The bombs fell nearby, but our hero was again not injured. On April 12, when the battalion was in defense behind the railway embankment, one colleague was killed by enemy fire, another was wounded in the stomach, and Turusov, who was standing with them... remained safe and sound. On April 25, 1944, a German shell hit the command post directly. The battalion commander, party organizer and chief of staff were wounded, but Grigory Tikhonovich did not receive a single scratch. The latter incident prompted him, a party man, to make an eloquent note in his diary: “Some kind of miracle is hovering around me.”

Miracles at the front...

In addition to cases of premonition and foresight in war, stories about “knowing people” were very popular among soldiers. In terms of genre, they all belong to the fables - stories about a person’s encounter with various manifestations of evil spirits. And here I would like to give a kind word to the Irkutsk folklorist Valery Petrovich Zinoviev (1942-1983). It was he who, through painstaking work, restored public interest in tales, which had faded during the years of anti-religious propaganda. In Zinoviev’s posthumous collection “Mythological stories of the Russian population” Eastern Siberia“There are records relating to the events of the wartime.

One of the most remarkable is the testimony of Semyon Stepanovich Noskov, born in 1901, who served in the 1256th Infantry Regiment of the 378th Infantry Division. Folklorist Valery Petrovich Zinoviev.

Their unit also had its own “knowledgeable”. He could command snakes. At his command, they could crawl into one place from all over the area, and then crawl back. Once at a crossing, to demonstrate his abilities, he pointed out to Noskov a lieutenant and a nurse passing by on horseback and said: “They will get to that bush and will not go anywhere further.” And after 50-60 meters the horses really stood up and did not move, despite the prodding. Only after the “knowing one” gave permission did they move on.

P.M.’s father-in-law also happened to encounter a similar “knowledgeable person” during the war. Popova, who lived in the village of Semidesyatnoye, Khokholsky district, Voronezh region. He predicted the fate of his colleagues. In particular, he told the narrator’s relative: “And you, Vasily, will be shell-shocked.” That's exactly what happened. (The story is taken from the collection “Bylichki and Byvalshchina of the Voronezh Territory.”)

And finally, in wartime they believed in the magical power of maternal blessing. This is what is said in the epic, recorded in 1991 in the village of Gorodets, Ostashkovsky district, Tver region. Allegedly, a certain collective farm activist lived there before the war, one of the first to join the party. His wife died, then his daughter caught a cold and withered away. When the time came to leave for war, all the men were surrounded by their relatives, and there was no one to see him off. Then one old grandmother took pity on the activist. She came up, blessed me, and gave me a psalm of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker. And that man went through the entire war without a single scratch. He even survived captivity. It was as if an unknown force was supporting him. When the former activist returned from captivity, the first thing he did was go to that old woman and thank her for the blessing and the cherished psalm.

...and in the rear

During the war years, difficult to explain things happened not only at the front, but also in the rear. Here stories circulated mainly among the female population and were associated with brownies, demons and similar creatures. In principle, this is easily explained. All thoughts of women were connected with husbands, fathers and sons, and since ancient times the brownie was considered a herald of news.

The collection “Mythological Stories of the Russian Population of Eastern Siberia” contains several tales recorded from Kristina Aleksandrovna Razuvaeva, a resident of the village of Atalanka, Ust-Udinsky district, Irkutsk region. The funeral for her husband came in the winter of 1942. According to the woman, the brownie foreshadowed this event twice. Even before the war, at night in a hut, out of nowhere, two men in suits and white shirts appeared. After admiring Christina’s newborn son, they approached her bed and, standing at the head of the bed, began to whisper about something.

Usually the brownie is very attached to his permanent owners, who have lived in the same house for generations.

Having recovered from the initial fright, the narrator managed, as usual, to mentally ask: “For good or for bad?” One of the men exhaled a long breath: “Hoo-hoo!” - and the woman was completely overwhelmed with heat, as if from a stove. The visitors immediately disappeared. And the next morning, Christina’s grandmother interpreted this incident as follows: she would have two husbands, and she would outlive both. The second time the brownie appeared in the form of a white hare with black ears. And again he appeared and then disappeared in a house that was locked from the inside. The woman did not remember the exact date, but on approximately the same days, namely January 21, her first husband was killed in battle.

A different story happened in the village of Yablochny, Khokholsky district, Voronezh region, with Evdokia Semyonovna Koltsova. During the war years, the family had no news for a long time about the narrator’s older brother, who had gone to the front. She herself was a child then. One night something shaggy fell from the attic, fell on little Evdokia and began to choke. And with the last of her strength she remembered the instructions of her elders and asked whether it was for bad or for good. “To goodness!” - answered the brownie and disappeared. And soon my brother returned from the front.

Finally, in a story heard by collectors in the village of Shardomen, Pinezhsky district, Arkhangelsk region, the “owner of the house” appeared in front of a woman warming herself by the stove in the form of a tiny man, who said that in three days the war would end. It actually ended on time.

Perm apocalypse

Many unusual things have been preserved in people's memory. natural phenomena, often perceived as a sign of the beginning of the coming Great Patriotic War. A whole series of similar tales was recorded in 1985-1989 in the Perm region by students and employees Perm University. So, in the city of Nyrob, Cherdyn region, a red ball was observed in the sky, which became increasingly larger, and then exploded. And in the vicinity of the village of Nizhny Shaksher, for many years later they remembered the unprecedented invasion of representatives of the animal world on the eve of the war. In winter there was so much fish in the river that they were literally rowed out of the ice hole with shovels. And in the summer, hordes of squirrels came from the taiga. There were so many squirrels swimming across the Kama that steamships traveling along the river had to be stopped because of this.

There was enough individual evidence during the war. Shortly before the start of the war, the mother of T.M. Kuznetsova from the city of Cherdyn, district of the same name, heard at night as if a woman’s voice was saying “Wonderful Month” in the house opposite the military registration and enlistment office. And then the song clearly went to Trinity Mountain and died down. The next morning, the narrator’s mother asked the woman who lived in that house: “Did you have a wedding?” “No, we didn’t have any music,” she answered. This happened in winter, and on June 22, 1941, the war began, and conscripts from the military registration and enlistment office went through Trinity Mountain, and women shouted at them.

Of course, you can try to explain what is happening in war from a scientific point of view. However, one thing is clear - the past war left a deep mark in the memory of our people. And she is destined to be forgotten very soon.

Photo: Arkady Georgievich Khodov, foreman of the 44th Guards Tank Brigade

Although more than a decade has passed since the end of World War II, there are still many secrets and mysteries from those times. Let's get to know some of them.

Who's in the picture

Six days after Germany's surrender, Life magazine published a series of photographs by one of the famous Hungarian photojournalists, Robert Capa. One of the photos shows a German sniper killed by a bullet. American soldier. This photograph has become an imperishable classic of documentary photography.

The body of a killed soldier lies on the balcony of one of the apartments in Leipzig. It was April 18, 1945. The man in the photo, of course, was not the last victim of the war, and at that time no one cared that the publication did not include the name of the deceased. He stayed unknown soldier 67 long years.
In 2011, the city of Leipzig gave permission to raze the building in which the above photograph was taken in one of the apartments.
However, a group of conscientious activists decided to prevent the demolition of the historical building. To do this, they decided to find out the name of the soldier who was immortalized by the photographer, and thereby attract the attention of the media and the public to the upcoming demolition of the building. The search began on November 27, 2011. Enthusiasts soon found out that dead soldier name was Raymond Bowman.

Result. The building will not be demolished. An investor has been found who is ready to completely restore it...

There are only two of us left

In 1958, Ivan Smirnov, a carpenter at the Nekrasovo state farm in the Uvarovsky district of the Moscow region, when he was trimming a birch trunk, found a cartridge case in it containing a note.

A letter from a Soviet soldier who fought in the Minsk Highway area was written in ink pencil in uneven letters on both sides of the piece of paper. Here is his text:
“12 of us were sent to the Minsk highway to block the enemy’s path, especially the tanks. And we persevered. And now there are three of us left: Kolya, Volodya and me - Alexander. But the enemies attack without mercy. And here’s another one – Volodya from Moscow. But the tanks keep coming. There are already 19 cars burning on the road. There are already two of us. We will stand as long as we have the courage, but we will not let our own people approach.
And so I was left alone, wounded in the head and arm. And the tanks added to the count. Already 23 cars. Perhaps I will die, but maybe someone will someday find my note and remember the heroes. I'm from Frunze, Russian. There are no parents. Goodbye, dear friends. Yours, Alexander Vinogradov. 22/21942"

As a result of the research, it was possible to restore the picture of the battles on the Minsk Highway in February 1942.

To contain the advance of Soviet troops near Moscow, the Nazi command transferred several additional divisions from Germany to the Soviet-German front. For the Soviet troops fighting in the Vyazma area, a difficult situation was created and the commander Western Front ordered the front armies to become more active.

On February 20, 1942, the military commissar of the 612th regiment gave the order to go out to the Minskoye Highway in the area of ​​152 kilometers west of Moscow and block the path of enemy tanks. The fighters positioned themselves along the highway. A group of fighters, which included Alexander Vinogradov, was on the flank. A column of fascist tanks suddenly appeared. The warriors fought for three days, the ranks of the defenders thinned before our eyes, but they did not retreat...

A. Vinogradov’s note is kept in the Central Museum of the Soviet Army.

The Perseus Mystery Revealed

In November 1941, at the height of World War II, the British submarine Perseus left its naval base in Malta and set off on its next mission. She was supposed to patrol the waters of the Mediterranean Sea near Greece.

On December 6, 1941, not far from the Greek island of Kefalonia, the submarine ran into an Italian mine and sank to the bottom, burying the entire crew with it...

And now, a year and a half later, the UK was shocked by the news: one person managed to escape during the sinking of the boat. It turned out to be John Capes. He was not on the crew list, but during the voyage he performed the duties of a driver.

According to Capes, on the night of the disaster, he was, as usual, in the engine room and lying in his bunk, made from the body of a torpedo. When the explosion occurred, he was thrown to the other end of the room. Quickly realizing that the Perseus had apparently hit a mine, John made his way through the bodies of the dead and wounded and tried to get out of the compartment. This turned out to be impossible, since the entire space behind the door was already filled with water. Putting on the Davis rescue apparatus, Capes opened the escape hatch, took a sip from a bottle of rum lying nearby and climbed out of the boat.

Capes, unconscious, was discovered the next morning by two Greek fishermen. For the next year and a half, he lived in the house of a local Greek, who agreed to shelter him from the Italian occupiers. It was only in May 1943 that Capes managed to get off the island and get to Alexandria, where the British military base was located.
For this rescue, John Capes was awarded the Medal of the British Empire, but soon distrust arose in relation to him: was John Capes on the lost boat or was it just his imagination?

The fact is that our hero was not listed on the crew lists. There were no living witnesses to his rescue either.

In Britain they began to say that John Capes was a kind of Baron Munchausen, chasing dubious fame. He died in 1985, having failed to convince skeptics of the veracity of his stories.
This story was continued only in 1997, when the Greek submariner Kostas Toktaridis descended to the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea and examined the sunken Perseus.

He found a torpedo-shaped bunk there and a bottle of rum in front of the escape hatch. All other details of Capes' stories also coincided.

In the eyes of many, John was vindicated.

I'm leaving with love

October 1941. A tank with a crew consisting of commander junior lieutenant Ivan Sidorovich Kolosov, Vasily Orlov and Pavel Rudov was damaged on the approaches to Vyazma. The commander was shell-shocked, the driver was killed. Kolosov and Orlov drained the fuel and removed ammunition from other damaged tanks, repaired their vehicle and took it into the forest.
Having determined that they were surrounded, the tankers decided to make their way to their own. On October 12, a lone tank destroyed a German column. However, on October 24, when the tank attacked another column, the Germans managed to deploy their guns...

A quarter of a century after the war, in a deep forest near Vyazma, a BT tank with a clearly visible number 12 was found buried in the ground. The hatches were battened down, and there was a hole in the side. When the car was opened, the remains of a junior lieutenant tankman were found in place of the driver. He had a revolver with one cartridge and a tablet, and in the tablet there was a map, a photograph of his beloved girl and an unsent letter dated October 25, 1941:
“Hello, my Varya!
No, you and I will not meet.
Yesterday at noon we smashed another Nazi column. The fascist shell pierced the side armor and exploded inside. While I was driving the car into the forest, Vasily died. My wound is cruel.
I buried Vasily Orlov in a birch grove. It was light inside. Vasily died without having time to say a single word to me, without conveying anything to his beautiful Zoya and white-haired Mashenka, who looked like a dandelion covered in fluff.
So out of three tankers I was the only one left. At dusk I entered the forest. The night passed in agony, a lot of blood was lost. Now, for some reason, the pain burning through my entire chest has subsided and my soul is quiet.

It's a shame that we didn't do everything. But we did everything we could. Our comrades will chase the enemy, who should not walk through our fields and forests. I would never have lived my life like this if it weren’t for you, Varya. You always helped me: at Khalkhin Gol and here. Probably, after all, those who love are kinder to people. Thank you, dear! A person gets old, but the sky is forever young, like your eyes, which you can only look into and admire. They will never grow old or fade.
Time will pass, people will heal wounds, people will build new cities, grow new gardens. Another life will come, other songs will be sung. But never forget about us, about three tankers.
You will have beautiful children, you will still love. And I'm happy that I'm leaving you with great love to you. Yours, Ivan Kolosov."
Varvara Petrovna Zhuravleva received letters addressed to her almost 30 years later.

The larger and more significant historical event, the more it becomes overgrown with mysticism and legends. The Great Patriotic War is no exception.

Researchers of anomalous phenomena have collected a lot of evidence of “supernatural” miracles of wartime. Among them are strange prophecies, premonitions and, finally, ghost stories, writes tainyvselennoi.

Signs of doom

It is believed that the Great Patriotic War began unexpectedly for most Soviet people. But this is not entirely true: shortly before it began, many had prophetic dreams and premonitions. At times, some even contemplated pictures of the future, which usually happens on the eve of major disasters.

Paranormal investigator Alexander Portnov writes: “In the winter of 1941, I was five years old, but I remember very well how my mother was under the impression of a nightmare for several days. She was very excited and repeatedly said that she saw a huge river covered thin ice, into which countless masses of people poured in from both banks and disappeared into the black water and under the ice floes.

Everything happened before my mother’s eyes: she was sitting on the shore in the snow-covered bushes, hugging me and my two-year-old sister to her; nearby, a horse was struggling in the water, drowning. The howling of a mass of dying people was heard. Some man stood nearby and told my mother: “Sit here and you will survive.”

I remember well how my mother said: “There will be a war. Newspapers and radio simply calm us down.” On June 22, 1941, listening to the speech of V.M. Molotov, she sighed heavily: “The dream has come true...”

The prophecies made by the Moscow schoolboy Leva Fedotov, who later volunteered for the front and died in 1943 in battles near Tula, are amazing. In his diary 17 days before the German attack on Soviet Union Leva named the exact date of the start of the war, and also quite correctly predicted its course. Thus, he wrote that Odessa would be taken by the Germans later than Kyiv, that a blockade awaited Leningrad, and the Nazis would not be able to encircle Moscow because winter frosts. The date of the beginning of the Red Army offensive was also indicated in the diary...

Researchers initially assumed that Fedotov made his forecast based on a thorough analysis of the military-political situation. But the boy actually had no sources of information! What was then published in newspapers and heard on the radio was limited by censorship.

Frontline bikes

In an extreme situation, people’s intuition often sharpens and sometimes they become able to foresee the future. Evidence of this is the stories of former front-line soldiers.

For example, Alexey S. from Leningrad knew from the first days at the front: he would not be killed, he would return home, but in one of the battles he would be seriously wounded. And so it happened. In the fall of 1943, Alexey suddenly felt that he was being wounded in the head and would be left with a scar covered by his hair. On February 26, 1944, a shell exploded near Alexei. The soldier was sent to the hospital. The wound on the head had healed, and the scar was actually covered by hair.

After being wounded, Andrei B. was returning to his native division. With difficulty he persuaded the driver of a passing truck carrying shells to give him a ride on the wing to the nearest village, where he decided to spend the night. We drove several kilometers. Suddenly Andrei was overcome by a strange anxiety: he had to get off immediately, he couldn’t go any further! He asked to stop the car and got out. The anxiety went away.

The truck began to move away. And then - an explosion. The car ran into a mine; those sitting in the driver's cab and the foreman were killed on the spot.

Here is another story from a former fighter. There was a soldier in his company who was shunned by everyone. The fact is that before each battle he approached one of his comrades and said:

"Write a letter home!" And as he says, it means that within 24 hours that person will be killed.

One day, for some reason, a lieutenant from a neighboring unit came to the company. The seer soldier looked at him and said his own: “Write home.” He, of course, didn’t understand, but the other fighters explained everything to him. The frightened lieutenant returned to his company and told the commander about the terrible prophecy. The commander laughed at the “superstition” and, in order to prove that the soldiers’ tales were nonsense, sent the lieutenant for reinforcements: they say, if he doesn’t go on the attack with the company, nothing will happen.

The young officer left the unit, and less than an hour later, a German shell hit the car he was driving. The driver and passenger were killed.

This case received publicity. They began to look askance at the private clairvoyant. They said that he himself was to blame for the death of his comrades: he was either capable of “crawling” it, or he was “shifting” his own death onto others. During one of the battles, a soldier was found shot in the back.

Phantoms point to burials!

Paranormal researchers claim that mysterious phenomena are often observed in places of mass battles and burials during the Great Patriotic War.

One of the most famous anomalous zones, associated with the war, is the forested swampy valley of Myasnoy Bor, 30 kilometers from Veliky Novgorod. During the Lyuban operation of 1942, a huge number of soldiers of the Second Shock Army, units German Wehrmacht, Spanish "Blue Division" and other troops. In total, about 300 thousand Soviet soldiers were destroyed in the Novgorod region. This was tens of times the number of enemy losses.

There are many unburied remains left here, the search for which is carried out by the combined detachment "Valley". Search engines say that birds do not settle in areas of mass death of people; all living things avoid these places. At night in Myasny Bor you can hear strange voices, as if from the other world, and at dusk in the forest you can meet soldiers in Red Army uniforms, who allegedly told the diggers more than once where to look for unburied bodies.

And here is an interesting story from the “black archaeologist” Alexei, who hunted with his comrades in the south of Russia, in the Bryansk forests, where the Bryansk Front took place from the winter of 1942 to the end of the summer of 1943.

“They dug up six of us and 11 Germans, including four Wehrmacht soldiers, in a littered dugout on the bank of the Zhizdra River. While we were working, it slowly began to get dark. We left the skeletons near the pit, and we ourselves settled down 200 meters away, in a clearing.

And then at night the devil began to happen! Valera, the duty officer, woke us up. “Guys,” he says, “something is happening, but I don’t understand what!” We got up and listened. And there, behind the ravine where we were digging, we could hear German speech, German marches, laughter, and the clanging of caterpillars. To be honest, we collected our things and went to the river, and stayed there for half a kilometer until the morning. In the morning we went there again. Nothing was touched. The skeletons lay just as we left them. But a little further we went, and there... Tank pits! And the most amazing thing is that the moss is all cut up! Yesterday some “panthers” were driving around here!

According to parapsychologists, in places associated with mass deaths and other dramatic events, a powerful release of energy occurs and a “memory field” is formed that can give rise to phantoms and various phenomena that are usually classified as the realm of the supernatural. Perhaps there is no special mysticism here, it’s just that these things have not yet been sufficiently studied.