75 years ago, Moldova was liberated from the Nazis… The prewar period on the eve of World War II was very difficult for Moldova. And this applies to everyone, not only to some part of the population – both Chisinau, and the whole country as a whole. Everyone, both right and left, got their share of suffering in the turbulent whirlpool of the events that took place. The arrival of the Red Army in June 1940 turned into a drama for the part of the population who came to Moldova from Romania during the 20-year period when the territory between Prut and Dniester was annexed by a neighboring country. Many of the common people were deported within the framework of the then concept of mixing peoples, in order to create a single Soviet man who was foreign to nationalism and other dangerous and aggressive things for society.
However, it so happened that exactly one year later everything returned to normal — the Romanian army joined the German forces advancing on the USSR, and in the summer of 1941 returned to Chisinau. Things followed that are hard to imagine for the layman of the 21st century – the mass executions of Jews, Gypsies and just Communists, regardless of nationality, in which the Romanian army took an active part, and not only in Chisinau, but also in Odessa. Even the foreign media cannot keep silent about this topic and from time to time in the Western press there appear publications on the Holocaust and the participation of the Romanian army in it. Only in the territory of Moldova and Transnistria, according to some estimates, up to 400 thousand people were destroyed.
In Chisinau, a special “institution” functioned, notorious for the Jewish “ghetto”, which was created on July 25, 1941.
Despite the fact that, according to some reports, the attitude of the Romanian authorities towards the residents of the ghettos was humane, there is much more evidence that this was actually not the case, and the words of the Romanian commandant Colonel Tudose at the first speech to the ghetto prisoners became “winged “:
– Gids, from today you are the slaves of great Romania. Who will not follow orders will be shot …
Already in the fall of 1941, the removal of prisoners from the ghetto began – they were transported to Transnistria, there were several training grounds for reprisals with the unfortunate. By 1942, a handful of people remained in the ghetto – no more than a hundred people. By the time the Soviet troops who liberated Chisinau returned to the city, only six people lived there.
The conditions for the liberation of Moldova from the joint German-Romanian invading forces were in place by the spring of 1944. Since April, the Soviet command began to “probe” the enemy’s defense, but it turned out to be very solid, and the Soviet troops could not develop a full-fledged attack because of the spring thaw. As a result, the first attempt of the Iasi-Chisinau operation was not the most successful – the losses of the Soviet troops were much higher, and it was not possible to achieve an operational advantage.
By the beginning of summer, the parties switched to a positional struggle – the German-Romanian command tried to fill in the gaps, the Soviet generals were planning a new operation, which was destined to go down in history as one of the most powerful military breakthroughs in the history of wars, one of the most successful Soviet operations during World War II, which was included in the number of “ten Stalinist strikes.”
The complete liberation of Moldova and the defeat of the enemy in all directions, the surrender of the Romanians who abandoned the Germans and asked to be allies of the USSR — these are the main results of the Iasi-Chisinau operation. Two days after the end of the operation, on August 31, 1944, Soviet troops entered Bucharest – that’s why they got excited there in 1992 after General Lebed’s catch phrase that he’ll have breakfast in Tiraspol, lunch in Chisinau, and to have dinner in Bucharest, “for they knew that this was more than possible from a historical retrospective.
From a military point of view, the second Iasi-Chisinau operation was prepared flawlessly – the Soviet troops showed an unprecedented level of interaction, high attack rates, unlike spring, and well-chosen locations of key attacks that cut the enemy’s troops into small groups that were quickly liquidated. In nine days (August 20-29), Soviet troops achieved more than in the previous few months. Moreover, the success of the Iasi-Chisinau operation became an excellent prologue for an attack on the Balkans, from where the enemy was literally fleeing, being suppressed by the stunning failures near Chisinau.
If in the first part of the Iasi-Chisinau operation the losses of the Soviet side amounted to 150 thousand soldiers, and there was almost no result, then in the second part everything changed – the losses of the USSR amounted to 12.5 thousand soldiers, but the German and Romanian troops lost 18 divisions, 208 thousand German and Romanian soldiers and officers were captured. In terms of the extent of the defeat, this was comparable to the encirclement of the sixth German army (and their Romanian “colleagues”) near Stalingrad.
It is worth noting that Moldovan volunteers actively fought in the ranks of the Red Army, and after the completion of the operation more than 250 thousand Moldovans went to the front and took part in the liberation of other lands affected by the Nazis. The work of the Moldovan enterprises that supplied all the necessary equipment for the needs of the military was also very important for the Red Army.
In turn, the Soviet leadership immediately began to rebuild the country – in the years 1944-1945, almost 450 million rubles were allocated for this. By the third decade of September 1944, railway communication and bridges over the Dniester were restored, which were destroyed by the retreating German-Romanian invaders.
The peasants received the seeds they needed, and the enterprises received the equipment necessary for the development of industry. Unfortunately, the consequences of the war, as well as adverse climatic conditions, drought, did not prevent hunger, and the Moldovans soon faced another test, but it no longer directly relates to one of the most successful operations in the history of the war.
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