Boris Kovalev - professor, doctor of historical sciences, leading researcher at the St. Petersburg Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In the Great Patriotic War, hundreds of thousands of soldiers and officers from European countries - allies of Hitler's Germany: Hungary, Italy, Finland fought against the Soviet Union , Romania. And also from Spain, which, as is known, did not take an official part in the war. The Spanish “Blue Division” arrived on the Eastern Front in October 1941, until August 1942 it was stationed in Novgorod and its environs, from where it was transferred to Leningrad, where it took part in bloody battles with the Red Army. It was the stubborn resistance of the soldiers of the Spanish “Blue Division” in the winter of 1943 that did not allow the blockade of Leningrad to be lifted a year earlier. The book uses numerous archival documents, diary entries and memories of Spanish volunteers, Soviet soldiers and residents of the occupied territories, as well as scientific works of foreign researchers.< /p>