Двуликая Европа

Эх, Европа, почему же ты такая двуликая, а еще призываешь Россию следовать "европейским ценностям".

Erna History Introduction On 23 August 1939, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany concluded the so-called Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the secret protocols of which divided Central and Eastern Europe into spheres of influence under the two powers. On 1 September 1939, Germany launched World War II with its attack against Poland. On 17 September, the other party to the Pact, the Soviet Union, started to fulfil its role by invading Poland from the east, at the same time concentrating large forces on the borders of the three Baltic states and Finland. On 28 September 1939, the Soviet Union coerced Estonia, through the intimidating presence of its units on the border and by direct military threats, into concluding a so-called mutual military assistance pact, which allowed the USSR to establish military bases in Estonia. Similar treaties were also forced upon Estonia’s southern neighbours Latvia and Lithuania. At the end of November 1939, Estonia’s northern neighbour Finland was attacked by the Soviet Union when it refused to conclude such a treaty. At the outbreak of the Winter War, many Estonians crossed the Gulf of Finland to rush to the aid of their kindred nation, which had fallen victim to the USSR’s aggression. While some of these Estonians went to the front using false identities and concealing their background, those who went to Finland officially were assigned to the Sisu Brigade, which brought together all foreign volunteers. Some of these Estonians later formed the core of the Erna unit. After the end of the Winter War in March 1940, about a dozen of the Estonians decided to go and help the Norwegians, who were fighting against the Soviet Union’s ally, Nazi Germany. These Estonians fought on the Norwegian front alongside Finnish volunteers and after the fall of Norway they all returned to Finland. On 14 June 1940, Paris was occupied by the invading German forces. During the time when the rest of the world was following the hostilities in Western Europe, the Red Army occupied Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. The Soviets forced the legal governments of the three Baltic states to step down and replaced them with puppet administrations, at the same time beginning to dismantle the former political structures of these countries. In July 1940, so-called “parliamentary elections” were held in now Soviet-occupied Estonia. All non-Communist candidates were removed from the ballot and the results of the elections were falsified. On 6 August 1940, the Soviet Union completed the total take-over of Estonia by annexing it and officially making it a part of the USSR. Western nations did not recognise the forcible annexation of the Baltic states, but Nazi Germany, in the spirit of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, did. The Soviet reign of terror, which began even before the formal annexation, reached an unprecedented level on 14 June 1941, when the Soviet authorities carried out mass deportations from all three Baltic states simultaneously. From Estonia, 10,205 people were shipped off to Siberia in cattle trucks; more than half perished in the inhumane conditions. Immediately after the deportations, countless Estonians left their homes to seek refuge in the country’s numerous forests and swamps. This flight was accompanied by the emergence of a widespread resistance movement. The Creation and Activities of Erna After the Soviet occupation of Estonia, hundreds of Estonians who refused to accept the occupying Soviet authorities and wanted to fight against them fled to Finland in the course of 1940 – 1941. They crossed the Gulf of Finland in various boats and, during the winter when the Gulf froze over, they crossed the ice on foot or on skis, or with horse-drawn sleighs. Attempting to escape was a dangerous endeavour since the Soviet border guard did everything in its power to prevent it and many attempts ended in death. Nevertheless, by the spring of 1941, the Estonian military attachй in Finland, Major Aksel Kristian, had drawn up a list of 70 Estonians residing in Finland who had expressed a desire to participate in the fight to free their homeland. Subsequently, Finnish military intelligence recruited 15 Estonian volunteers and sent them for specialised training on the island of Sцkц. Soon afterwards, the unit was expanded, and a number of German military intelligence officers also became involved in the training of these Estonians, who wore Finnish uniforms and were armed with Finnish weapons. The first commander of the unit, which had been named Erna, was the Estonian officer Colonel Henn-Ants Kurg. After being deployed to Estonia, Erna was to be under the jurisdiction of the German 18th Army. On 22 June 1941, war broke out between the former allies, the Soviet Union and Germany. When Finland also became involved in this conflict, it was hoped that the situation would provide an opportunity to launch an active fight against Estonia’s Soviet occupiers in the name of restoring national independence. In the ensuing years of constant warfare, circumstances meant that Estonians had to bear arms within the ranks of both Soviet and German units, but Communist and Nazi ideology remained foreign to the majority of Estonian people. The restoration of Estonian independence was still seen as the ultimate goal. The anti-Communist Estonian partisans, the so-called Forest Brothers, who became active after the war broke out between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, had the very same objective. Before the advancing German forces arrived, the Forest Brothers and other similar groups took power in many locations in Estonia, re-establishing the legitimate local governing institutions. Starting on 10 July 1941, Erna was sent to Estonia in several small squads. Some landed amphibiously at Salmistu Beach, while others parachuted in. After a long and dangerous trek, the men managed to evade capture and reach the forests of Central Estonia. A base camp was established at Kautla. The members of Erna that arrived from Finland were soon joined by local Forest Brothers. The majority of these men had fled into the forests after the mass deportations of 14 June and had been looking for opportunities to fight against the Soviets since the beginning of the German-Soviet war. It is known that 62 local men joined up with the Erna unit. Erna’s assignment was to carry out reconnaissance on the Red Army’s home front—to observe the movement of military units and to determine the precise locations of various military headquarters. This information was to be transmitted, by radio, to Erna’s home base in Finland. In addition, Erna tried to organise the local Forest Brothers in a larger operation for the liberation of Estonia before the arrival of German forces. This, of course, required weapons, but the Germans had not permitted a large quantity of weapons to be sent to Erna. Despite the shortage, the reconnaissance unit carried out successful raids against Soviet military and security units, thus helping to create an extensive “partisans’ republic” in Central Estonia. The activities of Erna and the Forest Brothers had, of course, not been overlooked by the NKVD, which was responsible for security on the Red Army’s home front. By July 31, the Kautla area had been surrounded, and Soviet security forces began their attack. At the time, about 2,000 Estonian civilians, most of them women, children, and senior citizens, had found refuge from the Soviet terror in the Kautla area forests. To save these refugees from certain death, an Erna strike force, under the command of Lieutenant Oleg Marnot, counter-attacked the Soviet security forces. Erna drew the brunt of the Soviet attack upon itself, enabling the refugees and the Forest Brothers to escape from the surrounded area. Although official Soviet reports declared that the Erna unit had been eliminated, it actually managed to break out of the area and, waging constant battles against an overwhelmingly larger enemy force, eventually crossed the front line on 4 August. The Soviet security forces responded with a wave of terror. The destruction of Kautla Farm was particularly infamous—the inhabitants were tortured and then burnt alive. The Soviet security units also destroyed about a dozen other farms within the surrounding area and murdered the civilians they captured, regardless of their age or sex. After crossing the front line, Erna was reorganised into a battalion (Erna I), and about 200 additional men joined. In the second half of August, during the evacuation of Estonia’s capital city of Tallinn, Erna rescued more than 3,000 people from the ship Eestirand, which had run aground near Prangli Island. Most of these people were young Estonian men who had been forcibly drafted into the Red Army. Members of the Erna Battalion also participated in the fighting for the capital from 20-28 August. Colonel Kurg resigned from his position as commander of the battalion due to conflicts with the German command, which did not want to give Estonians the chance to be the first ones to enter Tallinn. The Germans, keeping in mind what had just occurred in Ukraine, were apparently afraid that the Estonians would declare the re-establishment of the Republic of Estonia in Tallinn. Kurg was replaced by Major Raimund Hindpere. After the struggle for Tallinn had ended, the battalion (now named Erna II) was deployed to the battles being waged on the Estonian islands. Thus, Erna II fought on the islands of Muhumaa and Saaremaa until 27 September when the unit was sent back to Tallinn and disbanded. Of the men who had come from Finland, ten were killed in the course of the battles in Estonia, and 17 of those who had joined Erna in Estonia also fell. The Erna operation in Estonia was later highly praised, since it can be considered one of the most successful long-range reconnaissance missions of World War II. From 1941 – 1944, many of Erna’s former members became active in the anti-Nazi Estonian nationalist resistance movement, which, basing its activities upon the principles of the Atlantic Charter, sought to restore Estonian independence. Several of Erna’s former members continued to work covertly for Finnish intelligence. Among other things, they informed their Finnish colleagues about the operations that the Germans planned to carry out against Finland after the latter withdrew from the war in September 1944. During this period, former members of Erna were also directly involved with the underground National Committee of the Republic of Estonia, playing a crucial role in the attempt to re-establish the independence of Estonia in September 1944. The members of Erna were on the front lines fighting to oppose the totalitarian powers—Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union—that had, in 1939, unleashed World War II. Erna’s struggle thus became a national legend that helped to keep alive the Estonian nation’s will to resist a foreign occupation that lasted for half a century. In the summer of 1993, after Estonia’s independence had been restored, a group of enthusiasts retraced the route of the reconnaissance unit’s trek, and founded the military-sporting club Erna Society. The next summer, the club began to hold the annual competition, Erna Raid, which is currently one of the longest and most difficult international military-sporting competitions of its kind.

кстати, "диверсионные" игры проводятся во многих странах..... да и даже в видеоиграх.если кто видел игру "смерш", тоже ведь неоднозначно.а вот более понятная игра и сюжет.. http://www.gamershell.com/news_9714.html

а если сюжета окажется по окончании малова то, можно еще найти..

http://www.hidden-and-dangerous.net/deluxe/missions.php

"ТАЛЛИН, 1 августа. Участники проходящей в Таллине конференции Европейской Конфедерации ветеранов войны (Confederation Europeene Des Ancients Combattants — CEAC), приняли заявление, уравнивающее два террористических режима – нацизм и сталинский коммунизм, и наградили министра обороны Эстонии почетной медалью."

А Россия рассвистелась. Очередная международная "Зарница". А что, в Павлика Морозова прикажете играть? Или "Молодую Гвардию"?