We Burned Alive. Condemned Men of the Great Patriotic War

Three bestsellers in one volume! The whole truth about the most dangerous frontline professions—tank commanders, pilots of fighter and assault aircraft—those who paid the highest price for victory and died the most terrible deaths, often burned alive. Take a look at the Great Patriotic War from the cockpit of “Yaks” and “Lavochkins,” through the sights of the “thirty-four” and the armored glass of the Il-2. Find out how many minutes a T-34 lives in combat and what it’s like to fight “to the last tank” (the remnants of the crews were pulled back to the rear only after all armored vehicles had been lost); feel how a fighter’s heart freezes after the command “Cover me, I’m attacking!” and how everything darkens in the eyes from overload during the exit from an attack; how many kilograms a pilot loses on a combat sortie, what profanity was heard over the radio during a “dogfight,” and what kind of blood has been paid for every victorious star on the fuselage. Feel what it means to be “black death” and to climb day by day onto the “humpback” (the front-line nickname for the Il-2) into the very furnace—into the impenetrable thicket of anti-aircraft tracers and the chaos of barrage fire—when every sortie turns into “Russian roulette,” into a suicidal “damn carousel,” with one difference: they didn’t get spun down there, they took off into hell… Ask yourself whether we—today’s people—can repeat their feat, whether we’re worthy of the immortal glory of our grandfathers.