The Nazis did not take them prisoner, shooting them on the spot. On the battlefield, they were the primary target for enemy snipers. Their losses are comparable to those of combatant commanders. Contrary to anti-Soviet propaganda, which spared no effort to defame and "demonize" the commissars of the Red Army, the words "Communists, go!" were not an empty phrase at the front - otherwise the Nazis would not have felt such fierce hatred for political officers. The author of this book went through the whole war "from call to call" - from the terrible defeats of 1941, when he had to leave the "cauldron" in Ukraine, to the victorious May 45, which he met in Vienna, commanding a division of heavy guards mortars.