History does not tolerate the subjunctive mood. Subjunctive mood of history

History does not know the subjunctive mood.

Said it suddenly and bluntly. In a dispute, this is an "island of safety", indicating a lack of arguments. It is also a breath prevention. After all, not only the history of Russia or Germany, but also the history of one's own life consists of the same "if only, if only ...". We guess, and more often we regret the missed opportunities. My grandfather said: “If I went to America in 1920, I would have been…” And the housekeeper Ulya: “If I hadn’t been evacuated to the blockade, I would have become a shop manager…”. There you too: if you hadn’t emigrated, how would your life have turned out? Or rather, what would I have written if I had not emigrated, since I myself would no longer be alive, you are not a tenant in the next world.

The fear of the subjunctive mood is the fear of facing the truth. Who said that history does not know the subjunctive mood? He knows perfectly well and even introduces this into the temptation that your conspiracy theory is. It is not necessary to write an alternative history of Russia, you can limit yourself to your own life.

“When you left, you missed so much,” one master of the pen, now a veteran of the pen, told me in 1990, when I inadvertently removed it from Molotov’s granddaughter. The Patriot Act is for my edification. Most of those whom I met in the ill-fated nineties, on the contrary, said: he was smart, he left on time. (" – Here's a nit, here's a nit... You think that we're the smartest, that... - and he shouted out five times in a row: - Clever! Clever! Clever!") Then many, headlong, rushed in my footsteps - then, catching their breath, backed up. In the early seventies it was called "twice a Jew of the Soviet Union."

At what fork in the road could the alternative life that I had missed, and which would have already ended anyway, begin? I am the banality itself: the princess of my dreams was film directing. The young man drew a little, wrote a little, played the violin a lot and arranged a masquerade: he wore a jacket left over from his grandfather, or dressed up in tatters, risking getting into the police - but he experienced an unearthly feeling of unity with the “titular nation”, since the fifth point is no longer read. In addition to this, the day before I was shaved off at the Moscow Conservatory: having passed the last exam (history with social science), I flew to the hairdresser and, shaved bald, received a matrikul. It was a stunt, that's what Yul Brynner and Kotovsky looked like. And now, naked-headed, in a tattered padded jacket, in boots on my bare feet, I met the sympathetic glances of ordinary people on the dacha platform. Some grandfather and grandmother - my current years - quietly gave me ten kopecks of copper. Did you recognize someone in me?

The temptation of cinema was so great that for its sake I was ready to stop loving it. In other words, I felt sick from Soviet films, from Soviet actors, their voices - especially voices and musical accompaniment in general (I still have to hack in the orchestra at Lenfilm, watching Klavka in a fluttering headscarf run and run along the same car). I watched exclusively dubbed films, as I read exclusively translated books. Only by betraying "Rashomon", "Italian Divorce", "Strawberry Glade" could one be seduced by the muse of sovkino (stress at will).

A man is shamefully weak, but Kai is a man. A classmate introduced me to three of his Odessa fellow citizens who studied at VGIK. It was hard to call it a meeting on their territory. The hostel of VGIK and the hostel of MOLGK are identical twins (inevitable genital associations are appropriate here). I read to them my story "The Story of Prester John", there were these lines:

I am a presbyter, I am a presbyter, I am presbyter John,

Triple, triple, triple I'm a dummy.

And a couple of paragraphs below:

I am Prester John, I am John, I am John,

I'm a chump three times, three times, three times.

To this, a fictionalized dream was read to me. The sign on the door remained in my memory: “Odessa embassy” - and that from a split watermelon “everything poured out without a single seed” (the hypnosis of “Strawberry Glade” betrayed a kindred spirit, despite the “seed”).

Three Odessa youths began to discuss who to send me to: “To Marlesha?” – “No, better to Romm. And be sure to play him.

With their help or in some other way, an audience was appointed for me. Romm, this darling of Soviet fate, probably a slave to liberal cultural clichés, had to peck at me: emotional, liberated - plus a violinist. Seventeen years old. Even my “neorealism si, socialist realism no” was on point.

When I arrived with the violin, there was an ambulance in front of the house. I also thought about Adrian Leverkühn .

Having discovered the symptoms of a known disease, he goes to the doctor and meets him on the stairs, accompanied by two gentlemen. He goes to another - in the middle of the room there is a coffin. It's not meant to be.

Another unrealized opportunity - I don’t know what, what life impressions. Prompted by Hemigway's Holiday..., I made it a rule to write in cafes. He asked for a liquor, no matter what, but not "mint" - "southern", "lemon", "anniversary" - and opened a notebook, which some joker dubbed "general", although there is nothing more private, more intimate than it.

So it was in the ice-cream shop on the Arbat - maybe in one of the streets branching off from it - where I found myself at a table with an old woman, who was enjoying ice cream like an old woman. Cats seem to be lapping milk: concentrated, not distracted by anything else.

The concept of "free table" exists only in Sovkino. In fact, they are waiting for a “free place” (rooms in a communal apartment). I got ready to write, but, having finished the ice cream, the neighbor set to work on me: in London, you see, workers are not allowed to walk around the center, the queen does not like badly dressed people. I decided: well, like that old woman whom I once met at the post office with a pile of scribbled papers - a medical history. She had cancer of the central nervous system.

And then my ears become like those of an inhabitant of Easter Island: today I went to the trial of Sinyavsky and will go tomorrow. I'm trying not to show my excitement. What happened in court? He hid something at his mistress's cottage. And again: workers, London, puns, which they do not have at all. I'm a violinist, right? (A case is at her feet.) She really likes Erdenko .

And Svetlana is so smart! And the children are wonderful, not like the brother is an alcoholic. Do I live in a hostel? To be sure to visit her. She will introduce me to Svetlana. Stalin's daughter. Good girl. They live on the same site. Good girl! Good girl! Good girl!

To change the record, I lamented that there were no tickets at the box office for Wuthering Heights, an American film. Please, she can always get two tickets. And if I want, she can take me to court tomorrow, she is entitled to an accompanying person. Her husband was Karpinsky, an old Bolshevik.

The widespread rudeness and rudeness are an example of what not to be. I very politely declined. Forty-degree syrup, which was supposed to stretch for a couple of hours, finished it in a matter of minutes, and paid off with a pre-prepared trifle.

And he could have spoken in an impartial way - about her husband, and about her neighbors, and about those who judge Sinyavsky. What I couldn't do was take advantage of her senile disposition, which would probably have something to remember today. From Russia, the cat cried impressions, just impressionability allows you to make an elephant out of a fly.

To live with closed eyes, in a dull rage from everything, including the taste “we”, extracted, say, from beer with a ram, to cross to the other side of the street at the word “Komsomol”, not to know one joy for all in the form of a TV and only create prayer, turning to face the frontier post, as if to Mecca - isn't that worthy of Tolstoy's laurel seeker? A jewish janitor, a sectarian writer, Tolstoy in a laurel wreath - all one conceptual series.

Once, sitting on the edge of a child's bed, I told my child, who also suddenly became a novelist: to write is to dream with a pencil in hand. For an eleven-twelve-year-old girl, in my opinion, an exhaustive explanation, indicating - if so - the right path. But only for a child, because you did not tell her the main thing: this is a dream turned into the past.

I catch myself thinking that to indulge in memories is to dream backwards. In the reasoning of a writer's work, life, full of events to the brim, is productive on the one hand: a sea of ​​​​material - but on the other hand, the past is cluttered up and fantasy is assigned the role of an interpreter - by no means a creator. Interpreters, professors of sour cabbage soup applaud with fins that you can't hold a pencil with. But just as ignorance opens the door to magic, so amnesia - the eventless past - allows you to turn on the "fantasy of memories" (Leskov's expression) at full power.

The testimony, before being finally heard, manages to lose its connection with the event and testifies to itself. I join the chorus of those who paraphrase the beginning of Anna Karenina: all memories are similar to each other, each fiction is invented in its own way.

Therefore, it was completely superfluous to go on about his curiosity and meet briefly with a policewoman, almost the same age. Yes, I missed the opportunity to participate in a masquerade, to feel in the enemy's rear. “Sow reasonable, good, eternal” - I sowed a passport and with this I went to the police, where I was treated kindly.

She is the head of the passport office. Important person. Only I, in her eyes, is apparently even more important: the permanent place of work is the Leningrad Philharmonic. And that Girshovich is not Popovich, she is even interested. They, the daughters of Eve, are all as one, God forgive me, puffy. In my free life, there were adventures that could captivate the reader: I pulled the painter through the window straight from the scaffolding, after which she got out the same way and continued to paint. But, I swear, never before, my palm did not dive under a police uniform.

She wore a foreign wig on her head—hiding snakes? All the same, it was a tribute to a short-term fashion. Suddenly, women's heads, as in the peysat region, were covered with wigs. Looking at her, I also thought that a batch of imported wigs was brought into their MVD distributor. We had a cultural time in a dark cinema hall. She said that she uses "Forest Lily of the Valley". When the light was turned on, she showed the bottle: I will give it so that I don’t confuse it. From her for the first time I heard the expression "called to the carpet." The anecdote I told about Brezhnev was not successful: I was forbidden, she was allowed. Prohibition, as you know, inflames: these jokes, if with the included payphone, I uttered a chervonets. Prohibition, however, inflames on both sides of the barricades. She offered to pick her up tomorrow at the end of the reception - did she want to stand in front of me like a leaf in front of grass?

I settled down on the side, a little behind her, a kind of boss in the eyes of the petitioner. Having served his term, he asked for mercy: to be registered at home, on the same living space with his wife and son. He was talking to her, but he was addressing a man in civilian clothes, a man. The feeling is unbearable.

Referring to an unforeseen rehearsal, I apologized for a long time, very cordially said goodbye to her, "so that never again ...". Never say never". I love this phrase in French, a completely different connotation, not warning, rather reassuring: jamais plus jamais.

The jokes will start shortly.

Where does the Motherland begin?

From the submission of paper to the OVIR.

1972 is a year of secret preparations for our family. From the intimidated Soviet people, civic courage was required that was not inherent in them. Everything was at stake: prosperity, freedom, the future - in a word, life. We enter the office of the OVIR inspector: dad, mom, aunt, uncle - he will die in two months from transient cancer, which he still does not suspect - my cousin, my wife and I.

I recognized her by her wig, without the wig I wouldn't have recognized her. I was embarrassed, she completely went spots. At the end of the second month of our waiting, I stood next to her in a crowded trolley bus, back to back, supposedly unintentionally. "How are we doing?" I asked quietly, without turning around. "You shouldn't have approached me ... There is a positive decision in your case."

Do not count the alternative moves in the maze you lived. A step - and you are at a crossroads, another step - and again at a crossroads. One can only guess what he lost, what experience? And what would it be, if yes, if only ... How many convolutions in the brain of this labyrinth against that one straight line along which you passed. Instead of the past, you have tabula rasa - write what you want, invent it for yourself. Happy inventor.

Notes

The hero of T. Mann's novel "Doctor Faustus", the creator of atonal music, who shared the fate of Hugo Wolf, Nietzsche, Maupassant.

Hereditary violinist from gypsies. The real name is Erdenkov. He was exiled to Vologda for participation in the events of 1905. He was the first to receive the title of Honored Artist of the Republic (1925).

There is such a phrase: "history has no subjunctive mood." Its meaning is that when assessing historical events, it is incorrect to say - “but if Hitler had won” or “if Churchill had died in 1934 ...”, etc. Since this is de "baseless speculation". "What was - that was." “What is it now?”

In fact, the reasoning is stupid and false. History not only has a subjunctive mood - without taking it into account, history is NOT UNDERSTANDABLE AT ALL.

Let's start with the banality. It is quite obvious that the most striking historical events - for example, wars or "all sorts of conflicts - are due to the fact that people have different ideas about a possible future. “I will win and be the main pepper on this small funny continent” - “No, we will win, but you will not be at all.” - "Let them kill each other as much as possible while we build a system of indirect control of these and those." “You can’t let them grapple, it will undermine our export of glamorous lawn mowers, because during the war they will not care for lawns.” Etc. etc. That is, the subjunctive mood enters the historical discourse, at least as the intentions of the actors.

Take, for example, all the same war. A and B fought, A won, B lost, A took a third of the territory, ten sacks of gold and half of the fleet from B. "Here are the facts."

However, how will the elites, politicians and population of countries A and B react to these facts (undoubted and obvious)? But this depends not only and not so much on the facts, but on what they expected from this war.

Suppose A expected the complete defeat and destruction of B, and built the entire war based on this goal - to wipe B off the face of the earth. It even had a chance, but B was very lucky several times - they almost accidentally won an important battle there, then they managed to conclude a successful alliance with C and D, and then America intervened in the war, which suddenly needed peace ... In general, A is furious and disappointment, the elites grumble, the former military write vicious military prose, become drunkards and conspire, but B, although pinched, is quite cheerful, rallied around the government and is building fortified areas on the borders with A at an accelerated pace.

And let's say that A got exactly what he wanted to get, and even more, but B did not expect a war, and lost something mainly from confusion. As a result, A licks his lips and flexes his muscles, while B feels beaten and humiliated, there is depression and apathy in the country, interrupted by outbreaks of belated revanchism, the military write vicious military prose, etc. party of radical environmentalists-militarists.

Note that in both cases the “facts” are the same: A won, B lost, A received trophies. But the story rushed along completely different tracks, and all because of different expectations. Concerning "hypothetical circumstances". Expectations that cannot be forgotten even after they have come true or not. The unfulfilled languishes even more and can have a greater impact than what “really happened”.

This is understandable even at the household level. If you suddenly find out that you once had the right to receive a million-dollar inheritance from an uncle in Argentina, but you were not informed about it in time, it will at least excite you, right? And what if it turns out that the doctor misdiagnosed your beloved daughter, and she died at the age of eight, although she could well have survived? For such a case, an inconsolable parent can break something to a careless doctor. Although, after all, “she died anyway”, “so what now”. But that one. The fact that the very subjunctive mood comes into play, without taking into account which even a protocol cannot be drawn up.

If we are already talking about protocols and other such things, let's remember such a legal concept as “lost profits”. That is, “unreceived income that this person would have received under normal conditions of civil circulation if his right had not been violated” (c) Wikipedia. Or, in more detail, from the same place: “Lost profit - 1) lost income, profit that a person could have received if his rights or conditions of activity had not been violated; 2) unfulfilled opportunities for generating income, profit due to an unsuccessful choice of image, method of action. By the way, even Russian legislation considers lost profits on a par with real damage - as, for example, in the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, Art. 15 "Compensation for damages". In particular, the lost benefit, if it can be proved and calculated, is subject to quite material compensation.

Harm avoided is valued similarly to lost profits. This is also a thing that is calculable and prescribed in the laws - for example, in the laws on extreme necessity (in the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation this is Article 39). The general principle for determining the legitimacy of actions in case of emergency (usually associated with causing harm to someone or something) is a comparison of the harm caused and prevented (the same, “hypothetical”). Art. 39, paragraph 2 begins as follows: “exceeding the limits of extreme necessity is the infliction of harm that clearly does not correspond to the nature and degree of the threatened danger and the circumstances under which the danger was eliminated, when the damage equal to or more significant was caused to the indicated interests than that prevented.”

In the case where the prevention of harm was not related to its infliction (at least to someone else), the one who prevented the harm is usually praised and rewarded. For example, a person who prevented an explosion in a powder depot will be publicly called a fine fellow, given a reward, and maybe even money. Even though nothing happened. Moreover, it is precisely because nothing happened that he is crowned with all these laurels. And even in the victorious report - "for the timely prevention of an explosion in a powder warehouse, Lieutenant Golitsyn was awarded a nominal weapon" - we are still dealing with the same subjunctive mood.

) then I will continue - about “the past is not chosen” (

Who defeated Hitler

"History knows no subjunctive mood." My friends, never repeat this nonsense again. The subjunctive mood is impossible in chronological tables - indeed, the phrase "King Louis XIV could have been born in ... year" looks strange. There is one of two things: either born or not. But for history as an integral part of the humanities (in any case, it falls short of science), a virtual experiment, the formulation and consideration of alternative development options are just as important as a full-scale experiment in physics. And in any case, the "alternative reconstruction" of the events of WW2 will cost us much less than the assault on the cardboard Reichstag, and it can add understanding of the causes and mechanisms for the development of real events.

So, the legend of the game. Until the morning of June 22, 1941, everything develops as it was in real history. Changes begin at 9pm June 22nd. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill speaks on the radio with an appeal to the nation, pronounces his famous phrase"The Nazi regime has the worst features of communism"reminds me of the fact that"over the past 25 years, no one has been a more consistent opponent of communism than me,"and announces the decision of the government: to stop hostilities against Germany, so as not to interfere with the two fiends (Hitler and Stalin) to destroy each other. The next day, June 23, Hitler speaks in the Reichstag with a statement that the unnecessary war between the fraternal German and Anglo-Saxon peoples, provoked by the Jewish-Bolshevik oligarchs from Wall Street, is ending.

On June 24, US President Roosevelt addresses the nation. With the coarse, cynical humor characteristic of the Yankees, he takes out of his pocket the Pravda newspaper of September 1, 1939 and reads aloud a fragment of the speech of the head of the Soviet government, Comrade Molotov:"If these gentlemen(comrade Molotov meant the leaders of England and France)there is such an irrepressible desire to fight, let them fight on their own, without the Soviet Union(Laughter. Applause). We would see what kind of warriors they are. (Laughter. Applause)."After a pause (so that the listeners can have a good laugh), Roosevelt says that now, having got rid of the worries and costs associated with the war in Europe, the United States will direct its efforts to normalize relations with Japan and, to begin with, as a goodwill gesture, are ready to sign an agreement on the supply of 10 million tons of oil per year (let me remind you that in real history, the United States in July 1941 imposed a ban on oil supplies from the United States to Japan, which actually put the Japanese economy on the brink of death).

To How are the events of the Soviet-German war developing under such conditions? We start counting.

Paragraph 1. Second front. In the real history of the second front (we, the Red Army - what do you think?) Was not. That is, in general. Not a single shot, not a single bomb along the entire gigantic stretch of the border between the USSR and Japanese-occupied China. And not because the party and the government, in their great wisdom, signed some kind of treaty with Japan (who looked at these papers in those days?), but solely as a result of the fact that all the forces of Japan were thrown into the furnace of a grandiose ocean war with America , in which war the Land of the Rising Sun burned to the ground. But in our alternate reality, this is not the case.

The Japanese cross the border and cut through a thin "branch" of the Trans-Siberian with one short blow. There is no one and nothing to stop them - the Siberian divisions have been transferred near Moscow (and it would not have been possible to refuse this transfer in any reality, because the defense of Moscow is more important in any case). And now we have: minus aircraft factories in Irkutsk and Komsomolsk-on-Amur (70% of the total production of Il-4, i.e. the only mass-produced type of medium bomber), minus an aircraft factory in Novosibirsk (15.5 thousand Yak-7 / Yak fighters -9, i.e. almost half of the actual production of the most massive Soviet Air Force fighter during the war years), minus the bread of Siberia and Altai, minus our only true ally - Mongolia (do not rush to laugh, this is every fifth horse at the front, every fifth cloth an overcoat on a soldier of the Red Army, this is 500 million kg of meat and all the tungsten available for our industry). And it is difficult to express in figures the psychological shock from the fact that the country found itself between two millstones, mercilessly and steadily shrinking from the west and east.

Point 2. Tanks. Suppose that the Japanese showed reasonable restraint and limited themselves to the capture of Eastern Siberia, i.e. the main "tank cities" (Sverdlovsk, Nizhny Tagil, Chelyabinsk, Omsk) remained in our hands. There are factories, but what are the tanks made of? Minus 27 thousand tons of American and British nickel (three-quarters of the resource of this main alloying element in the armor of T-34 tanks), minus 17 thousand tons of molybdenum concentrate (almost completely covers all real consumption), minus 34 thousand tons of zinc, minus 3, 3 thousand tons of ferro-chromium ... In real history, there were also deliveries of finished armor steel from the USA, but the figures in different sources differ greatly; in any case, steel must be melted, hardened, drilled and cut - with what? Minus 10,000 tons of graphite electrodes, minus 49,000 tons of electrodes for electroplating baths, minus 14 million (millions, Karl!) kg of tool steel, minus 45,000 machine tools...

And in addition to this, we note minus 12 thousand ready Lend-Lease tanks and self-propelled guns, minus 7 thousand armored personnel carriers (there were none at all), minus 2 thousand steam locomotives and 11 thousand wagons. And what about steam locomotives? And despite the fact that Lend-Lease deliveries made it possible to almost completely curtail their own production of rolling stock and transfer factories (including the giant Nizhny Tagil Carriage Building) to the production of tanks.

Point 3. Ammunition. Tanks, of course, attract special attention of fans of computer "shooters", but the main means of destruction in the years of WW2 was artillery, which consumed mountains of shells. In real history, 123,000 tons of ready-made gunpowder and 150,000 tons of chemicals for gunpowder production were received from the allies, which is twice the estimated cost for equipping ammunition for the main infantry artillery systems. Gunpowder must be poured into the sleeve - 266 thousand tons of brass were received under Lend-Lease. Gunpowder in a case is a propellant charge; what is hurled must yet explode. Lend-lease received 903,000 detonators, 46,000 tons of dynamite, 146,000 tons of TNT and 114,000 tons of toluene. And also 603 million (this is not a typo) rifle-caliber cartridges, 522 million large-caliber cartridges, 3 million shells for 20-mm air guns and 18 million anti-aircraft shells.

In an alternate reality, none of this will happen. There will also be no 8,000 anti-aircraft guns and 6,000 sets of semi-automatic sights for them. There will also be no best Soviet anti-tank 57-mm guns ZiS-2, because. a very long (73 caliber) barrel was bored out only on machines received under Lend-Lease.

Item 4. Soviet shells made of American brass, loaded with American gunpowder and TNT, brought by an American steam locomotive in an American wagon on American rails (620,000 tons were supplied) must somehow be delivered from the unloading station to the firing position of an artillery battery. What to carry? There are no American trucks in the amount of 375 thousand. There is nothing to put shoes on one's own, falling apart on the go - there are no 3.6 million American tires, and there is no Lend-Lease rubber, which in real history provided a third of its own production. Soldiers also have nothing to wear - minus 13 million pairs of leather army boots.

There are no 50 thousand command "jeeps". Commands are transmitted by flags and signal fires - minus 16 thousand tank radio stations, minus 29 thousand various radio stations for infantry, minus 619 thousand telephone sets and 1.9 million km of telephone wire (you can wrap the Earth around the equator 48 times), minus 4 .6 million dry cells and 10 million (yes, ten million!) radio tubes.

Item 5. In the middle of the 20th century, the outcome of battles on the ground was largely determined by air supremacy. There are no 18 thousand American and British combat aircraft. If we add to this the loss of two Siberian aircraft factories (see paragraph 1), then we have no medium and long-range bomber aircraft at all. The Pe-2 is used as a bomber, hastily molded in the "sharashka" of the NKVD from a high-altitude fighter, with a maximum bomb load of 600 kg (the German single-engine fighter FW-190 took 500 kg of bombs, the American single-engine Thunderbolt fighter - 908 kg). Yes, and it is not clear what this Pe-2 is made of - in the absence of Lend-Lease aluminum and chromansil (high-strength steel). The same question is about the production of Yakovlev fighters. Lavochkin fighters are made from the so-called. "delta wood" (multilayer plywood, to put it simply), we have our own wood, but phenolic resins for gluing veneer are imported. But even if some planes are found, then how to refuel them?

In real history, the Soviet Air Force used 3 million tons of aviation gasoline during the war. One third is American gasoline. The second third is gasoline of our own production, brought to the required condition by mixing with American high-octane components. A third of the third million is made in four complete American factories brought across the ocean. And let's not forget about 6300 tons of tetraethyl lead (an anti-knock additive), which arithmetically completely covers the needs of Soviet aviation gasoline production. Since there is none of this, and the planes are quietly on the ground, you can not even remember the absence of 12 thousand tons of Lend-Lease ethylene glycol (coolant that could fill about 250 thousand aircraft engines).

And now - from the little things to the main thing. To what is happening on the other side of the front.

Item 6. In real history, from the first to the last day of the war, in the waters of the Atlantic, in the depths of the sea and in the sky-high heights above the ocean, there was a grandiose battle; grandiose not in terms of the number of people directly involved in naval battles, but in terms of the cost of material resources. In particular, from 39 to 45, Germany produced 1.113 submarines with a total tonnage of 960 thousand tons. Even considering in the most primitive way, in terms of weight, these boats correspond to 40 thousand medium tanks of the Pz-III or Pz-IV type. Is it a lot? In fact, for the entire duration of the war, the Germans produced "only" 28 thousand of these tanks (including self-propelled guns on their chassis). At the same time, we understand that a ton is different from a ton, and a submarine, in terms of "filling density" with the most complex systems (hydroacoustics, autonomous navigation, long-range radio communications, crew life support, optics, pneumatics, batteries, etc.) is much more expensive and more complicated than a tank.

In an alternate reality, after the withdrawal of the Anglo-American allies from the war and the curtailment of the construction of submarines, the Germans get the opportunity to increase the production of tanks by 2-3 times. For those who doubt the possibility of such a conversion, I propose to google the words "Krasnoye Sormovo". And all these tanks go to the one and only Eastern Front. And now these tanks are diesel (in real history, Germany spent most of the diesel fuel resource for the war at sea, and the tanks won the entire war on flammable gasoline).

Submarines were for the Germans the main, but far from the only tool of the war at sea; aviation was actively working, and this is again a colossal expenditure of material and intellectual resources: thousands of aircraft, hundreds of thousands of tons of aviation gasoline, torpedoes, mines, locators, Fritz-X radio-controlled planning bombs, Hs-293 ​​cruise anti-ship missiles (the last two types of weapons that were ahead of their time for a decade, more than 500 units were used in hostilities, but they were produced three times as many). It was to naval aviation that most of the "new types" bombers were transferred - the long-range twin-engine Do-217 and the giant 30-ton "Ural bomber" He-177. And in an alternate reality, all this goes to the Eastern Front.

Item 7. In a real war, Germany did not have a rear - the aviation of the Western Allies incinerated Germany in the truest sense of these words. Four-fifths of German cities with a population of 100,000 or more became targets of massive bombardments; at least half of residential buildings were destroyed in 70 cities. On average, between 12 and 15 million Germans were woken up every night by the sound of air raid sirens and, grabbing children in their arms, fled to bomb shelters - with understandable consequences for their productivity the next day.

In 1944, 915 kilotons of bombs hit Germany, in some months the "tonnage" reached 110 kilotons. This isfifty hiroshima a month(American experts who studied the consequences of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima after the end of the war calculated that 2.1 kilotons of conventional ammunition would have been required to achieve the same destructive effect). 21 kilotons dropped on Stuttgart, 22 on Dortmund, 35 on Cologne, 36 on Essen. During the war, Berlin was bombed 363 times, 45.5 kilotons of bombs were dropped on the city, 612 thousand (and this is not a typo) residential buildings were destroyed, the zone of complete destruction reached 26 square meters. km - five times more than in Hiroshima.

Item 8. In real history, Germany tried to fight back. 10 thousand anti-aircraft guns defended the sky over the "Reich". Counting by weight and cost, these 10,000 "convert" into at least 35,000 anti-tank guns, and we are talking about 75-mm Pak-40 (less than 11 thousand units were produced in real history), which pierced armor our "thirty-four" with a probability of more than 90%.

Since the traditional means of air defense turned out to be powerless, the Germans created and threw into battle more and more complex military-technical "exotics". Ground-based radars, airborne radars, automatic anti-aircraft sights coupled to the radar, the Wasserfall radio-controlled anti-aircraft missile, the Me-163 rocket fighter, the Me-262 twin-engine Messerschmidt jet fighter, the vertical launch rocket fighter (a kind of "manned anti-aircraft missile") Va- 349, He-162 jet fighter ...

All of the above really flew and shot. The jet Me-262 was produced in the amount of 1.433 units, the rocket Me-163 was made more than 400. In a desperate attempt to knock Britain out of the war, German engineers created the world's first Fi-103 cruise missile (aka V-1); production was put on stream, about 8 thousand (!) cruise missiles were fired.An unprecedented achievement was the creation of the V-2 medium-range ballistic missile. A huge structure with a height of a 4-storey building was accelerated by a liquid rocket engine to a hypersonic speed of 1700 m / s, the rocket went beyond the atmosphere (trajectory height 90 km) and delivered a ton of explosives to a distance of 320 km. The total production of this miracle of technology amounted to 5200 units! How many millions of Faust cartridges for the Eastern Front must be counted into these 5,000 ballistic and 8,000 cruise missiles?

All this endless abundance of numbers boils down to the fact that in the proposed alternative reality we would have 3-4-5 times less weapons and ammunition, and the Germans on the only Eastern Front would have the same 3-4-5 times more equipment and one and a half times more people. And all this is mere trifles compared to the most important:

Item 9. Nazi Germany had a huge fleet of surface warships. In real history, from the first to the last day of the war, he fought with the fleet of the Western Allies. In our alternate reality, this armada is two newest battleships (Tirpitz and Scharnhorst), three heavy cruisers (Deutschland, Admiral Scheer, Prince Eugen), two old battleships (Schlesien and Schleswig- Holstein"), three light cruisers ("Emden", "Leipzig", "Nuremberg") and dozens of destroyers - at full speed goes through the Bosphorus to the Black Sea. In real history, Turkey, behind which stood the Anglo-American bloc, closed the straits for the Germans, in an alternative reality, the Turks confine themselves to a diplomatic note expressing deep concern (unless they themselves join the campaign against the USSR).

In real history, the Germans, using aviation and a dozen torpedo boats (the Kriegsmarine did not have a single surface ship of the destroyer class or higher in the Black Sea), drove the Soviet Black Sea Fleet into the Poti-Batumi region, where it stood until the end of the wars. There is no reason to doubt that the appearance of large forces of the German surface fleet in the Black Sea would have ended with the second in a quarter of a century the flooding of the Black Sea Fleet and the unhindered landing of German troops on the Black Sea coast of Georgia. From Batumi to Baku 700 km in a straight line, and at most in a month the Germans either seize the oil fields or burn them to the ground with air strikes (doubters can google the words "Lufwaffe raids on Yaroslavl, Gorky, Saratov")

For the Soviet Union, the loss of Baku oil means a catastrophe on a strategic scale. West Siberian oil did not yet exist at all, and the so-called "second Baku" - the fields of Tataria and Bashkiria - gave no more than 5-7% of the production of the "first Baku". The Red Army now fights on carts, in the Ural collective farms they plow on broads. How, where and when would the war end under such conditions?

I think that the same way that the war on the Western Front would have ended if in another alternative reality he would have been the only one. That we are without the Anglo-American allies, that without us they were doomed to inevitable defeat. And in real history, Nazi Germany was defeated by a coalition of world powers, so it was called: "anti-Hitler coalition." The participation of our country in this coalition - despite all the horror of the war and the tragedy of the death of millions of people - was the most worthy, brightest event in the thousand-year history of Russia. This must be remembered, this can be proud of.

(taken from comments)

"History has no subjunctive mood"- a stupid Russian-language phrase. Of course, it is not shared by historians themselves; Historians just believe that assessing the probabilities and prospects of potentially possible directions in the course of history and the comparative consequences of different alternatives is, although difficult, but a legitimate subject of historical research. In particular, it is absolutely necessary for understanding the choices faced by various actors of history and the motives for making their decisions.

The studies of some historical events are generally full of subjunctive analysis through and through. Thus, for example, historical studies of the end of the war in the Pacific region and the atomic bombing of Japan are a massive study, analysis and comparison of counterfactual alternatives. (Here, as a very typical example of research on the subject, which explicitly explores various counterfactual alternatives and their possible combinations.) Likewise, a lot of WW2 research asks questions along the lines of "what were possible strategies for Hitler after 1939?" etc.

There are also historical exercises specifically, full-scale in subjunctive history - in the form of a series of collections of articles by professional, academic historians on the topic "what if" exploring the forks of history, possible alternatives and their probable course.

ed. Robert Cowley, "What If?: The World"s Foremost Military Historians Imagine What Might Have Been"
ed. Robert Cowley, "What If? 2: Eminent Historians Imagine What Might Have Been"
ed. Robert Cowley, "The Collected What If? Eminent Historians Imagine What Might Have Been"
ed. Robert Cowley, "What Ifs? Of American History"
ed. Andrew Roberts, "What Might Have Been: Imaginary History from Twelve Leading Historians"
Roger L. Ransom, "The Confederate States of America: What Might Have Been"
eds. Dennis Showalter, Harold Deutsch, "If the Allies Had Fallen: Sixty Alternate Scenarios of World War II"
ed. Niall Ferguson, "Virtual History: Alternatives and Counterfactuals"

Finally, it is only in the perspective of subjunctive assessments that any lessons from history can be drawn at all.

And finally, the very phrase about "thanks to [something]" may only make sense from the perspective of comparing actual history with subjunctive alternatives. If subjunctive alternatives are not conceived, then there can be no "thanks" a priori.

Bocharov Alexey Vladimirovich
"The problem of alternative historical development: historiographical and methodological aspects"
http://klio.tsu.ru/contents.htm

Common phrases that history does not have (does not know, does not tolerate, does not allow, does not love, it does not have) the subjunctive mood, or - historical science excludes (it is not applicable, not permissible in it) the subjunctive mood, literally flooded journalism, and partly the arguments of professional historians. This phenomenon could become an interesting object of study for memetics - a science that describes in terms of genetics the reproduction, distribution, selection, mutation and death of memes - elementary units, quanta of culture. Such informational quanta - memes, can also be formulated ideas, literary clichés and phrases used by the authors of printed works. The life of a meme can be imagined by analogy with the trajectory of the spread of a virus, which can only exist in the cell of an infected carrier. The carriers of the meme "history has no subjunctive mood" in our case are the arguments of historians devoted to historical experience, "the lessons of history", the choice made by the subjects of historical activity in critical situations, unexpected changes in the course of events under the influence of accidents.

It is characteristic that following the statement about the inadmissibility of the subjunctive mood in history or before them, arguments very often sound in the subjunctive mood. This, on the one hand, shows the need for this very “subjunctive mood” in the study of the historical past, and on the other hand, indicates the absence, or at least the underdevelopment, of methodological reflection on this problem. For a significant part of Russian historians, the entire methodology on this issue most often comes down to another meme, namely: “to study what could have been should be in order to understand why everything happened this way and not otherwise.” It seems that the problem of alternative historical development, due to its importance and complexity, should not be reduced to the functioning of memes.

The alternativeness of historical development is one of the most functional phenomena of historical consciousness. Awareness or denial of the possibility of a different course of events is often the main reason for turning to the past. When does the realization of alternative historical development arise? Probably, when historians begin to explain the course of events not by the will of the gods, but by the will of man. For example, the already famous book by Niccolò Machiavelli “The Sovereign” (“Prince”) is full of arguments in the subjunctive mood. However, the search for the original historiographic origins of the theme of alternativeness is not included in our tasks. The work is devoted only to the period when the alternativeness of historical development is recognized as a special methodological problem that requires special study.