June 22, 1941 in the historical files of foreign historiography
Authors:   National Technical University of Ukraine «Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute», Ramazanov Shamil , Levitas Feliks ,   Institute of the Postgraduate Education, Boris Grinchenko Kyiv Universite
Published: December 2022

The events of World War II and its component – the German-Soviet War do not lose their significance more than 75 years after its end and remain a field for fraught scientific debate in the society. Historical lessons of the past tragedy must be studied from all angles and interpreted objectively. The European choice of Ukraine stimulates the national scientists not to ignore thorough military historical research of the specialists from near and far abroad, and results of this objective studies must be taken into consideration in the contemporary Ukrainian historical discourse. Characteristics and evaluations of the foreign colleagues are not only important in view of reconstruction of the historical events, but also from the scientific and cognitive perspectives of research of World War II, overcoming various myths and political prejudices. In retrospective evaluations, the information contained in the article concerns security of the contemporary Ukraine, as far as it demonstrates what political, military and propaganda tools can be implemented by an aggressor. The article reveals a wide range of problems: political and diplomatic maneuvers of the USSR and Germany on the eve of the war, strategic plans of the Workers and Peasants’ Red Army and the Wehrmacht, events on the German-Soviet front in June-December 1941, which are covered in foreign historiography, first of all, in the Anglo-American and German one. The authors of the publication rely on significant source material represented in foreign publications, unbiased analysis of facts and events and their original interpretation. The scientific basis for writing this article were the works by famous politicians W. Churchill, F. Roosevelt, M. Albright, etc. The authors of the article rely in their research on the representative legacy of the historians from far-abroad countries: B. Liddel Hart, A. Clark, W. Shirer, O. Werth, P. Carell, L. Deighton, B. Alexander, D. Glantz, G. Jacobsen, M. Hastings, T. Hunchak, S. Yekelchyk, which contains significant informative material. The publication considers important scientific investigations of the specialists from the neighboring countries: D. Volkonogov, V. Karpov, V. Anfilov, R. Irenarkhov, V. Deynis, Yu. Gorkov, O. Isaiev, V. Runov, V. Sherstnev, B. Shaptalov, etc. The mentioned authors have managed, to a large extent, to free the history of the war from Soviet stereotypes, to use the sources of the Archive of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation, which were declassified only in the post-Soviet time. To form the authors’ vision, memoirs of the military and political elite of Reich III – J. Goebbels, H. Rauschning, F. Halder, W. Keitel, Е. Manstein, H. Guderian, H. Hoth, K. Tippelskirch, G. Blumentritt, etc. – were involved. The authors of the article arrived at the conclusion that the science of contemporary military-historical research in Ukraine clearly contrasts with the existing foreign narratives. Therefore, foreign experience and historical practices of the colleagues from near and far abroad enable to expand drastically the field for scientific discourse, to fill it with the meaningful material and from the point of pluralism of opinions, to give the right answers for the problematic issues.