Because there was no nail in the forge. About the small but main reason for the bankruptcy of a great country: Because there was no nail in the forge

12.02.2024

From an anecdote, “It’s simpler Muller, you forgot to fasten your fly.” . .
The proletariat dictator seriously thought that he was a dictator and did not work, but drank. . .
I drank what I gave away my Fatherland to the Alcoholic for a bottle

Original taken from vvdom c Because there was no nail in the forge...

About a small but main reason for the bankruptcy of a great country

The Soviet Union collapsed due to the betrayal of the then elite. Now it's already indisputable fact. But there is no need to look for CIA, Mossad or MI6 agents among the party and Soviet leadership of those years. No external enemy did not do more for the collapse of the USSR than those people who stood on the podium of the Mausoleum on November 7 and May 1. Through their efforts proletarian state first it became ideologically and spiritually bankrupt, and only then the end of 1991 brought the final line under its agony.

But it all started much earlier, as evidenced by the very revealing history of the early 1970s. Soviet people remember her with aspiration...

At that time, the future ideologist of the CPSU Mikhail Zimyanin occupied the position of editor-in-chief of Pravda, the main print organ of the Communist Party and the entire Soviet Union. Once he organized the arrival of a delegation to the USSR fellow fighters from the Italian communist newspaper Unita. As the final chord of her study of the achievements of socialism, a meeting was held at the editorial office of Pravda.).

The honored guests were then invited to the editorial board, and Mikhail Zimyanin asked them to talk about their trip around our country. One of the Italians expressed the general opinion:
— We visited the Gardens of Eden...

What's wrong beautiful in this story, what gives reason to consider it an illustration of the betrayal of the Soviet elite?

The USSR of the 1970s, as those who are older have not yet forgotten, was a country of a total shortage of quality goods. Things have not yet reached empty store shelves, as in the late 1980s. But what was on them was not in demand, to put it mildly. This also applied to shoes - even for Czech and Yugoslav products there was a real hunt, and the provinces did not receive such imports at all, going to regional special distributors. And now the party boss, propagating Leninist modesty and Bolshevik asceticism from the pages of his newspaper, flaunts custom-made Italian boots, paid for in foreign currency. And in front of the entire editorial board.

Trifle? Yes, but very revealing. Showing the colossal gap between the party's word and real deeds. It was this abyss that ultimately made the collapse of the USSR so easy and quick - people are not blind or stupid either...

Further, the editor-in-chief of Pravda talks about his partisan past as the legal basis for his right to exclusive footwear. But at the same time they were alive millions front-line soldiers, whose legs, beaten by heavy military roads, needed special care no less. What about shoes? Thousands Veterans of the Patriotic War huddled in communal apartments, dilapidated huts and even barracks with amenities in the yard. By the way, the cost of a good Italian pair of boots, made to order, was - in the price scale of that time - quite comparable to the price of a cooperative apartment.

Well third- O partisan paths in Belarusian forests. Mikhail Vasilyevich Zimyanin really had a relationship with the Belarusian partisans. As a member of the North-Western Operational Group of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Bolsheviks, this regional headquarters of the partisan movement of the Republic. And in Polesie his legs really appeared: “ In 1941 - one once, in 1942 - two, but in 1943 - already eight "(this was recorded, however, from the words of Mikhail Vasilyevich himself).

In the title photo, Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee M.V. Zimyanin stands behind General Secretary L.I. Brezhnev, to the right of Yu.V. Andropov, who is wearing a general’s jacket.

And now - like the cherry on the cake. From the same memories.

After the editorial board, I asked Mikhail Vasilyevich how he was not embarrassed to take off his shoe? He replied:
— When talking with people, truth is the most powerful argument.

Turn out the lights, as they say! However, why be surprised if by that time the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Leonid Brezhnev himself already fervently believed that the fate of the country and victory in the Great War was predetermined by his party political work on Malaya Zemlya.

This was the Soviet elite of that time - deceitful, greedy, two-faced. Betrayed what lay at the deepest basis of the USSR: faith in the state equality and justice. However, compared to the current ministers and oligarchs, she looks almost like a saint. But only because the current ones - below the baseboard.

Looking at how our modern elites, year after year, day after day, persistently break through bottom and even bottom, sincerely believing in their titanic struggle to build Great Russia, I just want to ask: did the sad and bitter experience of their predecessors teach them nothing?

There was no nail - the horseshoe was gone.
There was no horseshoe - the horse went lame.
The horse went lame - the commander was killed.
The cavalry is defeated - the army is fleeing.
The enemy enters the city, not sparing prisoners,
Because there was no nail in the forge

In my bash scripts I insert
#!/usr/bin/env bash set -euo pipefail

Option -e stops the script if the process did not return 0(and writes to stderr on which line the error is).

This prevents trouble if one of the commands in the list fails:
svn up build copy some files delete secret files deploy build to external server Option -u stops the script if used undefined variable. This prevents trouble for example in such cases:

tar -czf download.tarball.tar.gz "$PROJECT_DIR /bin"

If for some reason PROJECT_DIR is not defined, then the system /bin is packaged and sent to users, instead of the compiled project files. And there are less funny failures, turning rm -rf "$1/$2" into rm -rf "/" with erasing everything.

In combination with the previous option, typos in environment variables cease to be unpredictable cascading nail fireworks. option -o pipefail Pipe execution fails if one of the subcomponents is executed with an error. For example,
cat file_that_doesn't_exist| iconv -f cp1251 -t UTF-8 > resulting file.

I explicitly ignore expected errors.
If I don't give a damn about the result of the command, I insert || true after it
cmd || true #"||" runs the second command if the first one returns non-zero. "||" you can read "otherwise".
If I delete a folder that may not exist, I explicitly check that it exists before deleting:
test -d dir_to_delete && rm -r dir_to_delete.
grep with empty output returns code 1, and error code 2 if there is a real error. I explicitly ignore codes less than 2:
cmd1 | (grep c || test $? -lt 2) | cmd2. #$? - return code, test A -lt B - comparison
I don't know how to conveniently check errors in cmd2 in code like this:
cmd1 $(cmd2). Tell?
I’m not an expert on “portable sh”, so if you use #!/bin/sh which is a link to ksh/dash/bash/some pseudo-POSIX, then you need to look in mana/google to see what options are available.
IN bat files programming reliably is difficult, and I don’t want to delve into cmd.exe carefully, I’m afraid for my psyche.
However, if I put a simple list of commands into a bat file, I put || at the end of each command. goto error or || exit /b 1 (or || pause if the script is interactive, always launched with the mouse).

Build || pause copy some files || pause delete secret files || pause deploy build to external server || pause

This technique allowed us to find stupid and cunning errors in the art update script for designers in the first two months of the project (otherwise we would have lived with them for two years).

I try not to write anything complicated in bat files; they are five times more insidious than C++, bash, assembler and perl combined.

If you do not make sure that each command in the chain works correctly,

For want of a nail the shoe was lost,
For want of a shoe the horse was lost,
For want of a horse the rider was lost,
For want of a rider the battle was lost,
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost,
And all for the want of horseshoe nail.

Or in Marshak’s translation:

You know, since childhood, this poem has made my heart skip a beat. No kidding. For me it has always been not just a poem, but a ballad, a poem, and a whole epic. A story about life and death, a historical novel, a philosophical treatise. There is a surprising amount packed into this little poem. Here it is - brevity, which is the sister of talent.
I imagined this medieval city and its inhabitants as real. A cavalry commander whose young life and brilliant career were cut short so stupidly and absurdly. And then - a burning city and a young mistress of the castle, committing suicide so as not to be captured. And a ruthless conqueror who gives the city up for plunder...
Silly, probably, in the style of youthful tragic romanticism.
In general, I love these English poems - about the king, about the cat, about Robin Bobbin, etc. But about the nail and the horseshoe, I still read and listen with bated breath. And I remembered because I watched a cartoon - a humorous opera based on this poem: Because there was no nail in the forge. The city there is good, just the way I imagined it as a child. (in the comments there is a link to the same cartoon on YouTube)

Sometimes you have to do strange things. Just now I listened to children's poems by English poets translated by S. Marshak and performed by Sergei Yursky. I came to the poem “The Nail and the Horseshoe.” Here it is, everyone knows it:
"There was no nail -
The horseshoe is missing
There was no horseshoe -
The horse went lame
The horse went lame -
The commander was killed
The cavalry is broken
The army is running!
The enemy is entering the city
Without sparing prisoners,
Because in the forge
There was no nail!"

And I remembered that this poem had a very specific historical basis. That's what they say, anyway. During the Battle of Vatrloo (1815), the French had every chance of winning. Moreover, they even confidently won it. The French cavalry under the command of Murat, having launched an attack that was breathtaking in its audacity and courage, captured the English batteries. The French began to gain the upper hand along the entire front. But the British threw back the cavalry, the battery resumed fire, the tide of the battle was turned, and Napoleon suffered a well-known defeat. After Waterloo, many wondered why the French, having captured the British battery, did not put it out of action. But everything turned out to be simple. In those days, to disable a gun, cavalrymen hammered an ordinary nail into the hole to ignite the gunpowder. Then they knocked off the cap - and that’s it, despite all the external intactness, the gun was not ready for combat. And everything would have been fine, but the cavalrymen really did not like to carry nails with them. An inconvenient thing in a mounted attack... Everyone tried to get rid of their nails, and, if necessary, ask for a dozen or two from their comrades. In the case of the English battery, everyone hoped, and at the decisive moment no one had nails. So the British got a completely combat-ready battery, which changed the course of the battle.
Like this. And you say “nails”...

Nail and horseshoe.
Read by S. Yursky.

A famous saying goes: “The devil is in the details.” In any case, the most insignificant details and circumstances can radically affect the course of events. In war, this is aggravated by the fact that sometimes you have to pay for unforeseen little things in lost battles and human lives. A clear example is the incident that occurred on the German submarine U 625 in the Atlantic and led to the death of its commander, Lieutenant Commander Hans Benker. The reason was simple: that day there was no ordinary knife in his pocket - a little thing that could save his life.

On January 3, 1944, the following entry appeared in the combat log of the commander of the Kriegsmarine submarine forces:

« U 625 attacked by an aircraft in a squareBF4761 at 20:31 after she reported returning to base. At 05:32 a new report was received from her, in which she said that the commander and an ordinary submariner fell overboard on January 2 during an aircraft attack. The commander has not been found."

The submarine force headquarters did not request details of this incident, preferring to wait for the return of the boat, the command of which was taken by the first watch officer, Oberleutnant zur See Kurt Sureth. On January 6, the boat arrived in French Brest, and Zuret wrote a detailed report on the details of the death of his commander. The command of the submarine forces was stunned by the absurd situation, which led to the death of an experienced submariner, Lieutenant Commander Hans Benker.

One of the Liberators from 224 Squadron, Royal Air Force, during service at the airfield in Bewley, Hampshire, England. The picture was taken a year before the events described, in December 1942.
Imperial War Museums

On the evening of 2 January 1944, U 625 (Type VIIC) began returning to base after a long stay at sea. Her voyage lasted eight weeks, during which the boat was successively part of four “wolf packs,” but was unable to achieve any success. Despite the fact that U 625 was considered a veteran boat, this was her first trip to the North Atlantic. Up to that point, Benker had been operating for a year in the Arctic theater of operations against Allied polar convoys and Soviet shipping.

At 21:38, the boat, which was on the surface, was unexpectedly attacked by a large four-engine aircraft, which illuminated it with a searchlight and fired at it from its on-board weapons. In response, U 625 opened fire from anti-aircraft guns. The plane did not drop a bomb while passing over the boat.

The Lee Searchlight, installed on British anti-aircraft defense aircraft, had several varieties in size and type of installation. On the Liberators it was suspended under the right wing plane in a special gondola and had a diameter of 20 inches. This powerful searchlight was very effective during night attacks on submarines: with a light intensity of 90 million candles, even at a distance of several hundred meters, a person caught in its beam physically felt a blow to the eyes and lost the ability to see for a long time. Along the edges the mechanics are wiping down spotlights; in the center is one Liberator at a night airfield, illuminated by the spotlight of another.
Australian War Memorial

It is worth noting that the attacker was hit hard. According to the American historian K. Blair, Benker's boat was discovered and attacked by the British "Liberator" of pilot officer J.E. Edwards (P/O J.E. Edwards) from the 224th squadron of the Royal Air Force. During the attack, the aircraft equipped with the “Lee searchlight” was damaged by return fire, and the gunner-radio operator from his crew was injured.

Apparently, this attack at dusk came as a surprise to Benker. U 625 had a Naxos electronic reconnaissance station, but the device did not warn that it had detected the operation of an enemy radar. According to Blair, immediately after Edwards, a second Liberator, piloted by F/O E. Allen from the same squadron, flew to the site of the discovery of the submarine.

At this moment, events on the bridge of the boat developed rapidly. At 21:40 Benker announced the alarm. After the commander’s cry, submariners rose from the central compartment into the wheelhouse and began to transfer ammunition for anti-aircraft guns from the internal “weapon room” to the bridge.

Color photo of the submarine U 160 taken from U 177 during a rendezvous in the Atlantic. In the front part of the U 160 cabin you can see the antenna of an early model of the Metox radio intelligence station, nicknamed by submariners the “Biscay Cross”

After repelling the attack of the first Liberator, Benker ordered everyone to leave the bridge and declared an emergency dive. At that moment, a crush arose in the control room of submariners supplying ammunition and upper watchmen descending from the bridge. The commander was the last to go down to the wheelhouse and discovered that it was impossible to close the wheelhouse hatch, because the connecting cable of the Naxos antenna, lowered from the bridge into the wheelhouse, was in the way.

Experienced Benker made decisions quickly. Shouting: “Blow out the ballast!” - He opened the hatch and jumped onto the bridge to remove the ill-fated antenna inside. However, due to the resulting pandemonium in the control room, the last order of the commander in the central compartment was not heard, and the boat continued to sink.

Once on the bridge, Benker noticed the second Liberator approaching and shouted down the hatch: “Air!” - giving a signal to repel an aircraft attack. This order from the commander was heard, and one of the signalmen of the top watch, torpedoman Hermann Wöpe, climbed out. At that moment, it dawned on Benker that the diving process was continuing, and he made the only right decision - to slam the hatch from the outside. After this, the commander and Woepe rushed to the anti-aircraft gun to open fire on the plane.

On the left is the boat U 889, which surrendered to Canadian sailors on May 13, 1945, in Halifax. The photo shows a Canadian Navy sailor inspecting the antennas of the boat's radar detection system. The latter consists of two systems: FuMB-7 “Naxos” (wavelength 9 cm, for detecting British anti-submarine radars Mk.III and H2S), as well as FuMB-26 “Tunis” (wavelength 3 cm, for detecting American radars). The entire structure rotates in a horizontal plane by a mechanical drive from the radio room. The system was not waterproof, and when diving, the external watch had to remove the antennas and carry them down. The loop antenna behind the sailor belongs to a VHF radio direction finder. On the left is the Bali cylindrical array antenna for detecting signals from early English naval radars with a wavelength of 1.5 meters. On the right is the bridge of an unknown German submarine. The photo also clearly shows the antennas of the FuMB-7 Naxos and FuMB-26 Tunis systems with a cable that went down and was connected through the conning hatch to the device inside the boat. In the foreground is the Bali antenna

Meanwhile, in the central compartment they realized that something was going wrong: the boat sank 11 meters, but the commander was not in it. The second watch officer, Oberleutnant zur See Günter Seyfarth, gave the command to ascend, after the wheelhouse appeared above the water, he opened the hatch and jumped out onto the bridge. At that moment, the screams of Benker and Woepe were heard behind and to the right of the boat. Seyfarth gave the order to give full speed and make a sharp turn to the right. After this, the first watch officer Zureth climbed onto the bridge and took command of the boat. Here is how he himself talks about the rescue operation undertaken:

“On the counter course, I heard cries for help ahead and headed towards them. I had to give up running on electric motors, as a Lancaster-type aircraft arrived again.

Again he gave the diesel engines full speed in the direction of the screams. Approximately 200 meters ahead, a signal buoy was dropped from an aircraft, then it disappeared from view at a heading of 270 degrees. I briefly switched to electric motors to better hear the screams. Faint calls were heard from the left side. I headed for them. However, the strong noise of the engines of the approaching aircraft forced the diesel engines to start again.

During the second flight, two inflatable single-seater rubber boats and four life jackets were dropped from the plane over the probable scene of the incident. One person was sent to the stern and bow of the boat for observation.

The plane flew by again, this time close, but did not notice us. I was forced to go on diesel engines in order to be able to maneuver during the new approach of the plane. The search continued.

22:00. A signalman of the top watch was found ahead on the left, who was lifted out of the water by an observer at the bow of the boat. Despite careful observation from the bridge, stern and bow, the commander was never seen. Visibility was good; objects at a distance of up to 500 meters were clearly visible in the water. We continued driving on diesel engines with short stops and switching to electric motors to listen. There was no response to repeated shouts from the bridge. Apart from inflatable boats, nothing else was found. Since nothing else was discovered, and having to reckon with the threat from the air every minute, I decided to dive.

I assume that our commander died a soldier's death before we reached the scene. My conclusion is confirmed by the words of the torpedoman, Corporal Wepe, who was in the water at a short distance from the commander when they called for help together. A short period of time before his rescue, he stopped hearing the commander’s voice.”

After reading Zureth’s report, Dönitz’s chief of staff, Rear Admiral Eberhard Godt, gave a positive assessment of the officer’s actions, satisfied with his actions according to the principle “perish yourself and save your comrade”:

“The first watch officer coped with his duties; in particular, the search for the commander and signalman of the top watch was qualified. The rescue of the signalman was a good result of the rescue operation, especially considering the constant threat from the air."

The submarine U 625 briefly outlived its commander, Hans Benker. The very next trip, the tenth in a row, became her last. On March 10, 1944, the submarine was sunk by a Sunderland flying boat from No. 422 Squadron of the Royal Canadian Air Force. The picture behind the wheelhouse shows splashes from depth charges dropped from the Sunderland, and fountains from machine-gun fire fired by the aircraft's tail gunner.
Imperial War Museums

However, Dönitz and Godt were concerned about what had happened. "Naxos", like its predecessor "Metox", nicknamed by submariners the "Biscay Cross", had the same inconvenience:

“Since the installation of this station was not initially envisaged, the antenna was stored inside a durable housing and was carried to the bridge manually during each ascent, after which it was docked to the receiver through the conning hatch with a special cable. The time for an urgent dive increased accordingly.”

The command of the submarine forces was well aware of this specific feature of the device, but situations with human casualties and a submarine on the verge of death had not previously been recorded. Therefore, measures were taken immediately. Recommendations for preventing such incidents were quite unusual. On January 11, 1944, the headquarters of the submarine forces sent out a radio warning message number 76 to all boats, which said the following (translation by E. Skibinsky):

“During preparations for a dive during an air raid alert on one of the boats, the antenna of the Naxos equipment was forgotten on the bridge; at the same time, her cable blocked the conning hatch and prevented it from closing. The commander gave the command to blow the air and jumped onto the bridge. His order was carried out late at the central post, as a result of which the boat took in water through the conning hatch, which was slammed shut from above, the commander was washed overboard, and they could not raise him.

Conclusion: If the Naxos equipment cable blocks the conning hatch during a dive, the dive itself should not be interrupted. It is necessary to continue pressing the conning hatch, which will flatten the cable (confirmed experimentally). It is also useful to provide the helmsmen in the wheelhouse with knives with which they could cut the stuck cable and throw it onto the bridge.”

It turns out that after a year and a half of submarines using anti-radar equipment in combat conditions, no one at headquarters thought of providing submariners with knives to avoid such situations. The commander of U 625 had to pay with his life for such a decision to be made.

The surviving submariners from the sunken U 625 tie individual rubber rafts together to prevent the waves from blowing them apart. Alas, the efforts of the sailors, looking hopefully into the lens, will remain in vain - no one will survive the storm that will break out the next night.
Imperial War Museums

In this case, it is appropriate to recall the words of one of the heroes of the famous film “White Sun of the Desert”: “The dagger is good for those who have it, and bad for those who do not have it... at the right time.” The incident with Hans Benker was a good confirmation of the old truth that in war there are no trifles:

“There was no nail - the horseshoe was gone,

There was no horseshoe - the horse went lame,

The horse went lame - the commander was killed.

The cavalry is defeated - the army is fleeing!

The enemy enters the city, not sparing prisoners,

Because there was no nail in the forge!”

Sources and literature:

NARA T1022 (captured documents of the German fleet).
Busch R., Roll H.-J. German U-boat Commanders of World War II – Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1999.
Blair S. Hitler's U-boat War. The Hunted, 1942–1945 – Random House, 1998.
Ritschel H. Kurzfassung Kriegstagesbuecher Deutscher U-Boote 1939–1945. Band 12. Norderstedt.
Wynn K. U-Boat Operations of the Second World War. Vol.1–2 – Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1998.
Morozov M. Nagirnyak V. Hitler's steel sharks. Series VII – M.: “Yauza-Eksmo”, 2008.
http://www.uboat.net.
http://www.uboatarchive.net.
http://historisches-marinearchiv.de.