Reflection of the battle for the Caucasus (1942-1943) in Russian and foreign (German) historiography
The article deals with the problems related to the coverage of one of the most important battles of the second period of the great Patriotic war - the battle for the Caucasus-in Russian and foreign (in particular, German) historiography. The relevance of this article is due to the fact that currently there is a distortion of the main events of the last war, its most important battles, attempts are made to reduce the role of the USSR in the defeat of Nazi Germany and its allies. On the other hand, there is a noticeable increase in interest in the Second world war, especially the most important battles that took place on the Soviet-German front, including the battle for the Caucasus. At the same time, Russian historiography does not fully cover the military events in the Caucasus of 1942 - 1943. the works of Soviet historians devoted To them are mostly tendentious; these events remain somewhat in the “shadow” in the studies of historians published in the post-Soviet period. Meanwhile, attempts to radically rewrite the history of the Second world war and distort the leading role of the USSR in achieving the great Victory and freeing the peoples of Europe from Nazi enslavement are increasing in the West. When covering the most important battles on the Soviet-German front, Western historians adopt the “theory of randomness” of defeats of the Wehrmacht armies, put forward by former Nazi generals (“fatal mistakes” of Hitler, “severe Russian winter”, “boundless expanses of Russia”, etc.). The purpose of the article is to identify the causes of war distortions and to prove their failure and, at the same time, their harmfulness in order to draw the necessary lessons from the second world catastrophe in the history of mankind.