.."The return reception of the Allies was decided to be held with true Russian hospitality" - this is how Marshal of the Soviet Union K. K. Rokossovsky recalled the reception he gave on May 10, 1945 at the headquarters of the 2nd Belorussian Front in honor of the commander of the 21st Allied Army Group, British Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery.

"In the guard of honor we put the Kuban people of the 3rd Guards cavalry Corps of Oslikovsky in a mounted formation, in full Cossack uniform. Montgomery and his officers were greatly impressed. For a long time the British watched with admiring glances the famously retreating cavalry. After the welcoming ceremony, the guests were invited to the large hall, where the table was served with skill and taste. Sitting at a plentiful table (the English had to talk standing up), our guests felt even better. The conversation became intimate. Montgomery himself, who at first tried to limit the time of his visit in a very delicate way, stopped looking at his watch and willingly got involved in the general conversation."

It was the first time that such high-level meetings were held with fellow soldiers, commanders whose troops, having marched some from Moscow and Stalingrad, others from the English Channel, made such a significant contribution to the defeat of fascism. Mutual sympathies were reinforced by high awards. Marshal Rokossovsky was awarded the prestigious Order of the British Empire. As for B. Montgomery, the Soviet leadership awarded him the Order of Victory.

It is necessary to pay tribute to the British field Marshal: for all his vanity and zeal for other people's glory, he was not only at the time of the war, but also later, was objective in assessing the contribution of the Soviet Union to the defeat of nazi Germany. "We must remember," he said,"that the Russians bore the brunt of the enemy's actions on land."

On the same day, July 5, 1945, the same award as Montgomery was awarded for the contribution to the defeat of fascism of Army General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme commander of the Allied expeditionary forces in Europe. It was he who led the landing of allied Anglo-American troops in Normandy in June 1944. The impression that the amphibious operation Overlord made on J. V. Stalin was evidenced by his "Reply to the Pravda correspondent, published on June 13, 1944:" It must be admitted that the history of wars does not know of another similar enterprise in terms of breadth of design, grandiosity of scale and skill in execution."

The Soviet leader is echoed by the biographer of the American commander S. Ambrose, who wrote that it was the appointment of Eisenhower as supreme commander of the Allied expeditionary forces that distinguished him from a number of famous generals and made him "a great commander of World War II and, as a result, president of the United States."

As you know, as a result of crossing the English Channel, a second front was formed, which the Soviet side so long and persistently sought. And so Stalin did not skimp on awards to those military leaders who directly led the Allied forces.

By the way, historians have made curious attempts to compare the merits of Western and Soviet military leaders. Without going into details, we will focus only on one aspect. In the conditions of the strict leadership of the party elite in the USSR, political leaders, most often completely incompetent in military affairs, nevertheless had the opportunity to interfere uncontrollably in the operational activities of commanders and commanders. Our allies were unfamiliar with this. General of the Army M. A. Gareev reflects interestingly, comparing the conditions in which our generals and marshals operated with the conditions of activity of the military leaders of the allies and the enemy: "Generals Eisenhower, Montgomery or MacArthur, being bound by certain political decisions, did not experience arbitrariness and the prevailing political dictate. Even German generals, under the pressure of the fascist leadership, could quite often resign and, with rare exceptions, without any special consequences."

However, let's return to the awardees. On June 10, 1945, in Frankfurt am Main, at the headquarters of the American occupation forces, Marshal G. K. Zhukov presented the Order of Victory to both Eisenhower and Montgomery. As Eisenhower's aide-de-camp later recalled, this award made an indelible impression on his patron. The future president of the United States, as if confirming the opinion of Americans as a practical nation, was not too lazy to find out its material cost. The Order of Victory was valued at $ 100,000. Eisenhower carefully counted the diamonds, took into account their size and decided that the order is worth 18 thousand. But what about rubies? We turned to the experts. They could not give an exact figure, because they did not decide whether the rubies on the order were genuine or synthetic. It was not possible to make a final decision - no one in the United States has ever seen genuine rubies of this size " (by the way, the rubies were artificial, since stones of such a rich color are not found in nature).

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On August 9, 1945, Marshal of Poland Michal Rolja-Zymerski was awarded the Order of Victory for outstanding services in organizing the Polish Armed Forces and for successfully conducting combat operations of the Polish Army in decisive battles against the common enemy-Hitler's Germany.

Zymersky (an underground pseudonym of Rol, he took already during the war) commanded the Ludowa Army ( People's Army) - a military organization that operated in 1944-1945 in the occupied Polish territory and numbered approximately 40 thousand people. During its existence, it destroyed about 19 thousand Nazis. The organization actively collaborated with Soviet partisan detachments, and with the entry of Red Army units into Poland, it merged with the 1st Polish Army created on the territory of the USSR into a single Polish Army.

It was headed by General Broni Zhimersky. Thanks to the generalship talent of the Polish military leader, his vast experience, perseverance, and energy, the number of Polish Troops by May 1945 reached 600 thousand people, and it was able to make a significant contribution to the final battles of the Red Army with the Nazis. At the personal request of Zymersky, Polish soldiers of the 1st infantry Division named after him. Tadeusz Kosciuszko took a direct part in the storming of Berlin.

For the Soviet Union, the very fact of the existence of patriotic forces that fought on Polish territory against a common enemy was important. The political factor was also of great importance: Rolajimersky represented the forces that gravitated towards the USSR. To mark the commander with our highest military order, among other things, meant also to oppose these forces to those politicians and military personnel who were guided by the emigrant government in London. In the light of the struggle with Western countries for influence in Poland, this seemed to Stalin absolutely necessary. The High Soviet award was presented to Roly-Zimersky on November 14, 1945 by the USSR Ambassador to Poland V. Z. Lebedev.

The subsequent fate of the Polish military leader was replete with both ups and downs. Promoted to Marshal of Poland, Rolajimerski served as Minister of National Defense from 1945 to 1949, after which he was succeeded by K. K. Rokossowski. In 1953, he was illegally repressed and remained in prison until 1956. After rehabilitation, the marshal, who was no longer a young man (he was born in 1890), did not return to military activity, but took up public work in the Union of Fighters for Freedom and Democracy.

On September 9, 1945, Josip Broz Tito was awarded the Order of Victory for outstanding achievements in conducting large-scale combat operations that contributed to the achievement of the United Nations victory over Hitler's Germany.

Tito-General Secretary of the CPYU Central Committee during the fascist occupation of his country in 1941-1945. was the supreme Commander of the People's Liberation Army of Yugoslavia and partisan detachments. Against the background of the struggle of other peoples of Europe against the Nazis, the Yugoslavs were distinguished by noticeably greater perseverance and ability to inflict maximum damage to the enemy. Their resistance to the invaders was massive, nationwide in nature. BUT the army was also a serious military force: suffice it to say that by the beginning of 1945 there were about 800 thousand fighters in its ranks. It held down more than 30 German, Italian, Bulgarian and Hungarian divisions, thereby making a significant contribution to the overall struggle of the anti-Hitler coalition. The partisans controlled most of the country's territory.

The Yugoslav soldiers took a direct part in the Belgrade operation of the Red Army in 1944, which resulted in the liberation of the eastern regions of the country, and in other military operations that ended with the complete expulsion of the invaders from the country. And all these years, Tito was at the head of the PLA and partisan detachments, since 1943 he held the title of marshal of his country.

In the eyes of the leaders of the anti-Hitler coalition, Tito was an authoritative public leader.

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In August 1944, he met with W. Churchill, who promised the interlocutor the help of the Western Allies. And in September of the same year, Tito communicated with Stalin in Moscow. In many respects, thanks to his declared course for the post-war construction of a democratic state, he received from the Soviet leader much-needed assistance to the Yugoslavs. Aircraft delivered weapons and ammunition to the partisans. In the interests of the PLA, specialists were trained on the territory of the USSR, aviation, artillery and tank units were formed.

The Order of Victory was awarded to Tito in Belgrade on September 29, 1945 by the USSR Ambassador. It should be recalled that by this time the marshal had already been awarded another Soviet award - the military Order of Suvorov I degree. High marks of the Yugoslav leader's contribution to the victory, however, did not prevent Soviet leaders from declaring him an "Anglo-American hireling" just a few years later, because Tito did not want to stick to Moscow's course in the post-war period.

So far, we have been talking about our allies, who became such from the very beginning of the struggle against Hitlerism. However, the Order of Victory was also awarded to a politician who was initially in the camp of the enemy. We are talking about King Mihai I of Romania. He was awarded the Soviet Order on June 6, 1945 with the following motivation:: "For the courageous act of turning Romania's policy decisively towards a break with Hitlerite Germany and an alliance with the United Nations at a time when Germany's defeat has not yet been clearly determined." But it all started quite differently...

Mihai came to power on September 6, 1940, the day after the establishment of the military fascist dictatorship of General Ion Antonescu in Romania. On June 22, 1941, Antonescu gave the order to cross the state border with the USSR along the Prut River, which the Romanian army did on July 1. Then Mihai expressed gratitude to the dictator "for the joy of reliving the days of glory of our ancestors."

But the joy was short-lived. The losses of the Romanians on the Soviet-German front were constantly growing, reaching 660 thousand people by the beginning of 1944. When the Red Army troops began to approach the borders of the country, the epiphany of the king and the nation began. On August 23, 1944, Mihai, in coordination with the democratic forces that were preparing an armed uprising against the fascist government, ordered the arrest of Antonescu, who had arrived for an audience with him. The royal declaration stated the cessation of military operations against the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition and readiness to conclude peace. Two days later, Romania officially declared war on Germany.

True, Mihai hoped that the first to enter Bucharest would not be the Russians, but the allies, and for this purpose he turned to their Mediterranean command with a request for landing troops. But this plan failed.

Nevertheless, Stalin considered it necessary to publicly assess the position of the Romanian monarch in the August days of the forty-fourth, which accelerated the defeat of the German army group "Southern Ukraine". On July 19, 1945 (earlier than Tito and Roljimerski), Marshal F. I. Tolbukhin, one of the main creators of the Iasi-Kishinev operation that brought Romania to the brink of military catastrophe, presented the award to the King. The ceremony was held in Bucharest in the Great Throne Room of the Royal Palace.

Mihai 1 is the only living knight of the Order of Victory. On December 30, 1947, under pressure from the masses, he abdicated and emigrated to Switzerland. 30 years later, in early 1997, the Romanian government restored the former monarch's citizenship rights. According to press reports, almost eighty-year-old Mihai is not averse to returning to play a stabilizing role in the life of a country that has experienced difficult times and serious upheavals under Ceausescu.

Historians have fragmentary information about the fate of only a few awards. So, the Order of Victory, which was awarded to Eisenhower, is now on display in the museum named after him in Abilene (Texas).

As for the award presented to Mihai I, according to foreign press reports, its fate was determined by the difficult life of His Royal Majesty in exile. To make ends meet, the badge of the Order had to be sold at a London auction. For $ 1 million...

There is hardly any reason to be surprised at this. Unfortunately, for foreigners, the Soviet order was more of a material value.

Colonel Yuri RUBTSOV, Candidate of Historical Sciences

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