Andrei Antonowitsch Grechko

Andrei Antonowitsch Grechko

Andrei Grechko ( Russian Андрей Антонович Гречко * 4 ^{. Jul} / 17th October  1903 ^greg. In the village Golodajewka (now Kuibyschewo) today in the Rostov Oblast , † 26. April 1976 in Moscow ) was a Marshal of the Soviet Union and 1967 to 1976 Soviet Minister of Defense .

Life

Military career

Grechko, the son of Ukrainian parents, joined the Red Army in 1919 and served in Budjonny's 1st Red Cavalry Army. After the end of the civil war and after completing his schooling, he entered the 6th Cavalry School in 1925 and completed his first military training in 1926. He became a member of the CPSU in 1928 . In 1936 he attended the Frunze Military Academy . At the beginning of the war in June 1941, he commanded the 34th Cavalry Division. It stood near Kremenchug . In the winter of 1942 he took over the leadership of the 5th Cavalry Corps. From September 8, 1942, the 47th Army he led was deployed in the Novorossiysk area. In October 1942 he received command of the 18th Army and, as major general, on January 5, 1943, the supreme command of the 56th Army , which recaptured Krasnodar on February 12 as part of the North Caucasian operation . In December 1943 he became Commander in Chief of the 1st Guard Army at the 4th Ukrainian Front . In 1944 he was appointed Colonel-General conveyed. Fights followed in Galicia and, at the end of the war, in the Czechoslovakian Carpathian region .

After the war he was Commander in Chief of the Kiev Military District until 1953 and Commander in Chief of the Land Forces of the USSR from 1957 to 1960 .

Political career

After Stalin's death, Grechko was commander-in-chief of the group of the Soviet armed forces in Germany from 1953 to 1957 . The uprising of June 17, 1953 was put down with his troops . In 1955 he was promoted to Marshal of the Soviet Union and at the same time appointed First Deputy Minister of Defense. In 1960 he replaced Marshal Konev as commander-in-chief of the Warsaw Pact troops and, after the death of Marshal Malinovsky, became Minister of Defense of the USSR from 1967 to 1976 . In 1968 he coordinated the project work for the invasion of the Warsaw Pact troops on August 21, 1968 in the ČSSR . From 1973 to 1976 he was finally a full member of the highest political body of the USSR, the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union .

Awards

Grechko has been awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union twice. After his death, his urn was buried on the Kremlin wall in Moscow, and the USSR Naval War Academy was given his name.

1965, he was from the GDR of the Patriotic Order of Merit awarded in gold.

literature

• Bertold Spuler: Regents and Governments of the World , Minister-Ploetz Vol. 4 u. 5, Würzburg, Ploetz 1964 and 1972
• Short biography about:  Grechko, Andrej Antonowitsch . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .

Web links

Commons : Andrei Gretschko  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Andrei Antonowitsch Gretschko in the catalog of the German National Library
• Grechko ( Memento from April 3, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia (Russian)
• Grechko on hrono.ru (Russian)

Individual evidence

1. ^ High Orders to Soviet Personalities , In: Neues Deutschland , June 29, 1965, p. 2