Alexander Michailowitsch Wassilewski

Alexander Michailowitsch Wassilewski around 1945

Aleksandr Vasilevsky ( Russian Александр Михайлович Василевский , scientific. Transliteration Aleksandr Michajlovič Vasilevskij * 18 ^{. Jul} / the thirtieth September  1895 ^greg. In the village of Novaya Golchikha in Vichuga , † 5. December 1977 in Moscow ) was a Soviet officer and chief of staff ( 1942-1945). The Marshal of the Soviet Union was Soviet Defense Minister from 1949 to 1953 .

Life

Youth and education

Wassilewski (1928)

Wassilewski was the son of a psalmist and later priest. He finished the spiritual school in Kineshma in 1909 and entered the Kostroma spiritual seminary . During the First World War he joined the Imperial Russian Army as an ensign in 1915 after four months of attending the Alexej Officers School in Moscow , in which he went from platoon leader to company commander , battalion commander . and rose to staff captain in 1917 . In 1918 he was an instructor in the military training of workers and peasants and a short time afterwards an elementary school teacher. From 1919 he served in the Red Army . During the civil war he was battalion commander and deputy of various regimental commanders and then himself commander of several regiments. In 1920 he took part in the Polish-Soviet War and in 1926 graduated from the Wystrel courses (military academy).

Military advancement

From 1931 Wassilewski was active in the combat training administration of the Red Army. From 1934 to 1936, as a colonel, he was head of the combat training department of the Volga military district. He graduated from the Military Academy of the General Staff in 1937 in the first course after it was founded. From 1937 he was head of the operational training subdivision , from 1939 deputy head of the operational department and from 1940 first deputy head of the operational administration of the general staff . In 1939 he received the rank of brigade commander and in 1940 that of major general .

Second World War

From August 1941 he was deputy and first deputy to the chief of the general staff and chief of operational administration , from June 1942 chief of the general staff and from October 1942 at the same time deputy to the People's Commissar for Defense of the Soviet Union. Wassilewski was the representative of the headquarters during the Second World War and had great influence on the planning and implementation of the largest military operations. He took part in the Battle of Moscow (1941/1942), the Battle of Stalingrad (1942/1943) and the Battle of Kursk (July 1943). During the Battle of Stalingrad, he led the defense against the counterattack of the German 4th Panzer Army , which tried with the Wintergewitter operation to relieve the trapped 6th Army of Colonel General Paulus .

In the first two years of the war he was promoted to the highest ranks in quick succession. Having in December 1941 to lieutenant general , in June 1942 , Colonel General and in January 1943 the army general had been promoted, he was then awarded directly in February 1943 as the second general of the Red Army during the war the rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union. After the death of General Ivan Chernyakhovsky in February 1945, he took command of the 3rd Belarusian Front , which took Koenigsberg on April 9, 1945 in the Battle of East Prussia . At the same time he was appointed a member of the Supreme War Council of the Soviet Union. In August 1945, he was the supreme commander of the troops in the Far East , the Soviet invasion of Manchuria by.

After the war

From 1946 he was the first deputy minister of defense before he held the post of minister of defense from 1949 to 1953 . At the same time he rose in the party hierarchy and was a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1952 to 1961 . From 1953 to 1956 he was reappointed First Deputy Minister of Defense, before he had to take on an insignificant post of Deputy Minister of Defense for questions of military theory in 1956, which he held until 1957. At the same time, Wassilewski was chairman of the Committee of War Veterans of the Soviet Union. Retired from 1957, he became a member of the Army Inspector General group at the Soviet Ministry of Defense.

Wassilewski died in Moscow in late 1977. His urn was buried on the Kremlin wall .

Awards and honors (selection)

Postage stamp in honor of Wassilewski, 1980

• Hero of the Soviet Union , twice (July 29, 1944, September 8, 1945)
• Soviet Order of Victory , twice (1945)
• Order of Lenin , eight times
• Order of the October Revolution
• Order of the Red Banner , twice
• Suvorovorden
• Order of the Red Star

Wassilewski's foreign awards include the American Legion of Merit , the British Order of the British Empire , membership in the French Legion of Honor and the Polish Virtuti Militari .

Publications

• Дело всей жизни ; Политиздат, Москва 1978 ( thing of the whole life ; Politisdat Moscow 1978; online )

literature

• Voennaja enziklopedija. Vol. 2. Moscow, 1994, pp. 18-19.
• Alexander M. Wassilewski , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 06/1978 of January 30, 1978, in the Munzinger Archive ( beginning of article freely available)

Web links

Commons : Alexander Michailowitsch Wassilewski  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Wikiquote: Alexander Michailowitsch Wassilewski  - Quotes (English)

• Literature by and about Alexander Michailowitsch Wassilewski in the catalog of the German National Library
• Newspaper article about Alexander Michailowitsch Wassilewski in the press kit for the 20th century of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Voennaja enziklopedija, p. 18