Abstract

According to the official Soviet historiography, the defenders of the Brest fortress (today in Belarus) resisted the German troops who attacked on 22 June 1941, for 32 days. The Soviet soldiers would rather perish than surrender; hardly anybody would be captured. On this basis the Fortress was granted the title ‘Hero-Fortress’, and a huge memorial was built on the site of the battles of June 1941. The author of this article analyzed German documents concerning the daily losses in dead and wounded of the Wehrmacht and captured Red Army soldiers. He concludes that these numbers can be used as an indicator of endurance and intensity of the fighting for the Brest fortress. The conclusions differ strongly from the assertions of the official narrative.

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