One of the results of the Great Patriotic War was the annexation of part of East Prussia to the USSR. Once upon a time, a long time ago, one of the Polish kings, tired of fighting the rebellious Slavic Prussians, invited the Order of the Hospitallers to help him conquer his neighbors, and “donated” the Teutonic Order land that did not belong to him. Generosity itself, in Polish! The Prussians were gone, they were slaughtered and Germanized. From here, in the 19th century, the German state began to recover. After defeat in the First World War, the victorious countries separated East Prussia from Germany with the “Danzig Corridor,” transferring part of the German lands to the newly formed Polish Republic. The “shame of Versailles” was the driving force that brought Hitler to Nazi power. Because of the “corridor” to Prussia, World War II began. The result of Poland’s defeat in 1939 was the restoration of part of the Russian territories along the border with East Prussia. The Bialystok ledge was formed, where, on the eve of the war with Hitler, they began to “pump in” troops, ammunition and equipment. Thanks to the “very effective control” of the troops by General Pavlov, commander of the Western Special Military District, all this property, everything that the country, straining its economy, supplied , received by Hitler as trophies. Pavlov was shot. How might history have changed if another person had commanded the district’s troops? After all, there were such people!