Frantic fortification effort undertaken by the Soviets in 1940/1941 was one of the vital elements to screen and cover a deployment of huge strategic forces which were to invade Germany and, consequently, Europe.
A huge construction plan, spanning 1.500 km of defences, required massive amount of men. Starting in 1940 (springtime) 25 new construction management councils were formed, along with 84 construction batallions, 25 independent construction companies and 17 transportation batallions. At the top of that respective military districts were forming extra units of army engineers to support the construction of the Molotov Line.
Thus 2 batallions were coming from the Baltic Special Military District (SMD), 15 companies form the Western SMD, 20 companies from Kiev SMD and 4 companies from Odessa SMD.
In springtime of 1941 about 136.000 soldiers were toiling on the new western border of the Soviet empire. This vast horde was supported by almost 18.000 civilian specialists, mostly Russians (or, maybe “Soviets” would be a more appropriate expression here) who were a qualified labour force and who were paid for their work.
Still, it was not enough. In May 1941 extra 13 construction and army engineer batallions were called in from eastern part of the Soviet Union, along with 4 transport batallions. Additional highly qualified specialists were also sent by the military academies and schools. But in springtime and early summer of 1941 construction still lagged behind the schedule.
Finally a total of 160 regular army engineer batallions, not to mention construction, transport and support units, were poured to the sites of the Molotov Line. The last ditch measure, undertaken by the Soviets, came in late may and early June of 1941: each division of the western echelon of the Soviet army was to provide two batallions of soldiers from every single rifle regiment. Those men were to swap rifles for shovels and join the already countless horde toiling along the border. Many of those men were doomed – they came under the onslaught of the advancing Germans armed only with their pickaxes and shovels. They became part of the statistics – and incredible loss of manpower suffered by the defeated armies of the Soviets in the opening stages of the German-Soviet war.
The three-loophole pillbox shown on the pfoto - never finished and never used - is an example of what all the effort came to.
In a grandiose Soviet style it came to nothing.
The numbers shown above do not include thousands of prisoners and thousands of inhabitants of the territories of western Poland conquered by the Red Army in 1939 and incorporated into the Soviet Union who were herded to feed the machinery of forced labour.
This photo is
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