80 years ago, on July 17, 1944, a “parade” of the defeated took place in Moscow - about 57,000 German soldiers and officers , mostly captured in Belarus by the troops of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Belorussian Front.

The columns were accompanied by horsemen with drawn swords and guards with rifles at the ready. Watering machines followed the prisoners, symbolically washing away dirt from the asphalt. “ Now, behind the last ranks of prisoners ,” wrote Boris Polevoy, “ there were columns of watering and washing machines, which immediately, in hot pursuit, washed and cleaned the Moscow asphalt, destroying, it seems, the very spirit of the recent German procession .”