Rodion Malinovsky

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Marshal of the Soviet Union Rodion Malinovsky

Rodion Yakovlevich Malinovsky (Russian: Родион Яковлевич Малиновский, Rodion Jakovlevič Malinovskij; November 23, 1898 (Odessa, Russian Empire) - March 31, 1967 (Moscow, Soviet Union)), was a Soviet military commander of the Karaite Jewish descent. A great master of the mechanized mobile war, he outdid his German adversaries in the art of the modern war and won some of the most crucial battles of the WWII. During the Great Patriotic War Stalin granted Marshal's rank only to eight of his major commanders, all of them were ethnic Russians with exception of Rokossovsky who was of mixed Polish-Russian parentage and Malinovsky.

Early life

Ruvim Malinovsky was born to the poor parents. His father abandoned the family, his mother married again but her new husband refused to adapt her son and Malinovsky lived with the family of his uncle, and worked an apprentice in the fancy goods shop. When he was 14 years old in 1912 Russia celebrated a centennial of her great victory over Napoleon. Young Malinovsky read about the war and was swayed by the pictures of Russian heroism. He strove to be a Russian soldier. After the beginning of the WWI in 1914, Malinovsky, who was only 16 years old and too young to be called to the army, stole to the military train that was going to the German front but was discovered. While the Russian Jews were widely conscripted to the tsarist army, Malinovsky was apprehensive that officers will not take to the front an underage Jewish lad. He named himself Slavic Rodion instead of Jewish Ruvim and convinced the commanding officers to enlist him as a volunteer. Later, in the Soviet Union he was officially registered as "Ukrainian" by nationality, this might help him to rise to the top of the Soviet military command.

Malinovsky served in the machine-gun detachment on the frontline. In October 1915 for repelling a German attack by the machine-gun fire he received his first military award, the Cross of St. George of the 4th degree and was promoted to the corporal. Soon he was badly wounded, pent several months in hospitals and after recovery he was sent to France in 1916 as a member of the Russian Expeditionary Corps where he fought in hotly-contested sector of front near Fort Brion, was promoted to sergeant. He suffered from the heavy wound in his left hand and received a decoration from the French government. After the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia French government disbanded Russian units but offered some of the best Russian soldiers service in the French Foreign Legion. Malinovsky fought against Germans until end of the WWI and for his heroic deeds received French Croix de guerre and was promoted to senior NCO. His service in France enabled him to learn French.

He returned to Russia in 1919, landed in the Russian Far East in Vladivostok, then occupied by Japanese and went to join the Red Army in the Civil War against the White Army. He reached the Reds in Omsk but his "French" appearance got him into a trouble. Red army soldiers suspected that he was a counter revolutionary officer who was going to join the Whites and almost shot him. Malinovsky proved his humble identity, was appointed instructor of machine-guns warfare and fought with distinction in Siberia. He stayed in the army after the end of the Civil War, studied in the training school for the junior commanders and commanded consequently machine-gun platoon, detachment, infantry heavy weapons company, and a rifle battalion. His commanders were impressed by his ability to leadership, will power, energy and military gift. In 1926 he became a member of the Communist Party, this membership was a requisite for rise in the military ranks but for Malinovsky affiliation with the Party was not simply a careerist decision. Like millions of his contemporaries he believed that the Communist Party was the best hope for the prosperity and greatness of Russia. In 1927 he was sent to the elite Frunze Military Academy. He graduated in 1930 and during next seven years rose from Chief of Staff of the cavalry regiment to the Chief of Staff of the 3rd cavalry corp where his commander was Semyon Timoshenko, a Stalin protégée.

After start of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 Malinovsky like many other internationalist Red Army officers volunteered to fight for the Republicans. Under his nom de guerre Colonel Malino he enlisted to the International Brigades and to the Republican Army and participated in planning and directing several main operations of the Republicans. In the Soviet Union in 1937 Stalin unleashed the Great Purge, several senior Soviet advisers were recalled from Spain, accused in espionage and executed. Malinovsky twice received orders to return to the Soviet Union but refused to comply with them. This was a rare bold act of defiance in the Stalinist state. Finally he received the third order, which stated that unless he returned to Moscow he would be considered a defector. This time Malinovsky complied but when he came back to the Soviet Union in May 1938 the great purge already subdued and Malinovsky escaped repression. Instead he was awarded the top Soviet decorations for his heroic service in Spain, the Order of Lenin and the Order of the Red Banner and was appointed a senior lecturer in the faculty of the staff duties and staff functions at the Frunze Military Academy, a position he held until March 1941.

In the spring of 1941 Timoshenko who then served the People's Commissar for Defense, was alarmed by German build up on the Soviet borders. To strengthen Red Army field command he dispatched some of the top officers from the military academies to the field units. Malinovsky was promoted to Major General and took command over the freshly raised 48th rifle corp in the Odessa Military District. The corp was positioned in the Moldavian town of Beltsy.

World War II commander

Eastern Front

After Germany invaded the USSR in June 1941, during tragic first months of the war, when the Red Army suffered enormous defeats, Malinovsky emerged as one of the few capable generals who knew how to fight Germans. His corp of three partly formed rifle divisions fought German Blitzkrieg in the battle of frontier along the line of the river Prut. Unable to stop numerically and technically superior German army Malinovsky waging heavy combat and frustrating several German attempts of encirclement retreated to Dnepropetrovsk. In August, he was promoted to Chief of Staff of the badly-batered 6th Army and soon replaced its commander. Once more Malinovsky proved his military competence and gift. He halted German advance in his section of the front in Dnepropetrovsk and was promoted to Lieutenant General. After retreat of the Red Army to Donbass, Malinovsky commanded joint operation of 6th and 12th armies and pushed Germans back from the Donbass. As a promotion for this success in December 1941, Malinovsky received command of the Southern Front. The front consisted of three week field armies and two divsion-sized cavalry corps. They were short of equipment and manpowers but Malinovsky pushed deeper into German defenses.

On January 18, 1942, the Southern and Southwest Fronts under overall command of Timoshenko launched a joint attack in the Kharkiv region and pushed the Germans back 100 kilometers. Timoshenko overestimated Red Army ability for the offensive war and suffered a heavy defeat. Although Timoshenko was the main architect of the ill fated Kharkiv offense, Stalin became suspicious about Malinovsky, referring to his WWI serve in the French army and his possible connection with the foreign interests. Still, Stalin who was aware of the want of the experienced high rank commanders did not persecute Malinovsky. The Southern Front was inactivated, and Stalin entrusted Malinovsky with the command of the hastily formed 66th Army, which was brought from the Stavka reserve to held positions east of Stalingrad. At the same time Stalin charged Nikita Khrushchev who served his top political officer in Stalingrad "to keep an eye" on Malinovsky.

The 66th Army had no combat experience but first time in the war Malinovsky commanded a unit that was near its full strenght in both troops and equipment. In September, Malinovsky's 66th Army desperately tried to halt German drive of Stalingrad. The offensive ended in October, with marginal success but it frustrated German attempts to encircle Stalingrad and slowed German push to the city. In the battle for Stalingrad every day was decisive. In October Malinovsky was sent as a deputy of the front commander to Voronezh Front to save the front from collapse. In December of 1942, in the midst of the Soviet drive for encirclement of the Axis forces in Stalingrad Operation Uranus, Malinovsky received command of the one of the best-equipped Red Army unit, the powerful 2nd Guards Army. Malinovsky played a key role in destruction of the German 6th Army in Stalingrad. He vanquished the German army group Don commanded by the best of German field commanders [[Erich von Manstein|Manstein].] German Field Marshal created a special army grouping based in Kotelnikovo 150 kilometers east of Stalingrad. Spearheaded by the prominent panzer commander General Hermann Hoth, Kotelnikovo army grouping tried breakout attempt at Stalingrad [[Operation Wintergewitter|Operation Winter Storm. While after the WWII military historians questioned the strategic wisdom of Manstein's action, the most remarkable feature of the battle was Malinovsky's operational and tactical ascent over Manstein and Hoth. He rapidly redeployed his forces from one sector to another as the situation demanded, assaulted advancing German forces from all possible directions and exhausted them. In a vicious battle of armor Malinovsky forced German retreat, instantaneously rearranged his troops for a decisive counterattack, breached deeply echeloned and well-prepered German defences and destroyed Kotelnikovo army grouping. It was a first WWII large scale clash of armor which Germans lost. Malinovsky's victory sealed the faith of 250,000 German and other Axis soldiers who were trapped in the Stalingrad pocket. Stalin promoted Malinovsky to Colonel General and awarded him with the highest Soviet decoration for the outstanding generalship the Order of Suvorov of the 1st degree.

In February 1943, Malinovsky resumed his command of the Southern Front and continue his drive against Manstein. In a less than two weeks he expelled Germans from Rostov a major strategic center on the southern flank of the Eastern European front. The next month (March) Stalin elevated Malinovsky to rank of Army General and gave him command of Soviet Southwestern Front which was renamed 3rd Ukrainian Frontin October 1943. During the following Winter Campaign, from December 1943 to April 1944, Malinovsky liberated much of Ukraine, including Kharkiv, and his home city of Odessa. His joy of expelling Germans from Odessa was marred by a horrible discovery. His relatives together with the rest of Odessa Jews were murdered by Germans. In May 1944, Malinovsky was transferred to the 2nd Ukrainian Front. Together with smaller 3rd Ukrainian Front, commanded by Army General Fyodor Tolbukhin, Malinovsky's forces continued their Southern push. During subsequent operations, 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian Fronts expelled Germans from the remaining Soviet territory and launched an invasion of the Balkans. In Jassy-Chişinău Operation in late August and early September of 1944 Malinovsky and Tolbukhin unleashed a brilliant Soviet Blitzkrieg. They encircled and destroyed half million of German and more than 400,000 of Romanian troops and forced Romania to overthrow pro-German dictator Antonescu and switch from the Axis to the Allied camp. Following these successful operations, Stalin recalled Malinovsky to Moscow and on September 10 1944 made him Marshal of the Soviet Union. Malinovsky returned to his front and continued his offensive drive, routing the Germans armies and their fascist allies in Hungary and Austria. Malinovsky finished WWII war in Europe with liberation of Czechoslovakia.

Japanese Front

After the German surrender, in May 1945, Malinovsky was transferred to the Russian Far East, where he was placed in command of the Transbaikal Front. In August 1945, Malinovsky lead the last Soviet offensive of World War II: he invaded Manchuria, which was under the occupation of Japanese forces. He crushed them in ten days, a model of mechanized Blitzkrieg warfare and of a classical double envelopments. After this victory, Malinovsky was awarded the Soviet Union's greatest honors, the order of the Hero of the Soviet Union.

Post-war Career

After the war, Malinovsky has been the commander-in-chief of Soviet forces in the Far East. In 1956 he was appointed Deputy Defense Minister, and in 1957, Minister of Defence of Soviet Union. He served in this position until his death.

Rodion Malinovsky died on March 31 1967 after a long illness.

References

• John Erikson, "Rodion Yakovlevich Malinovsky" in Harold Shukman, ed., Stalin's Generals (NY, 1993, pp. 117-124).
• Rossiiskaia evreiskaia entsiklopedia, vol. 2 (Moscow, 1995, p. 232).
• David M. Glantz, The Soviet Strategic Offensive in Manchuria, 1945.'August Storm' (London, 2003).
• Mark Shteinberg, Evrei v voinakh tysiachiletii (Moscow, Jerusalem, 2005, pp. 316-318).