Andrei Andreevich Vlasov

Andrei Andrejewitsch Vlasow in German captivity in 1942

Andrey Vlasov ( Russian Андрей Андреевич Власов ;. Scientific transliteration Andrei Vlasov Andreevič ; born September 1 ^{. Jul} / 14. September 1901 ^greg. In Lomakino , government Nizhny Novgorod ; † 1. August 1946 in Moscow ) was a Soviet lieutenant general . In German captivity, he changed sides and built the Russian Liberation Army - Russkaja Oswoboditelnaja Armija, ROA, also known as the Vlasov Army - which fought on the side of the German Reich in the German-Soviet War .

Life

In the ranks of the Red Army until the beginning of the Great Patriotic War

After training at a Russian Orthodox seminary, which he gave up after the October Revolution , and a brief study of agronomy , Vlasov joined the Red Army in 1919 . After completing a four-month commanding course, he was deployed as a platoon leader with the armed forces in southern Russia on the southern front. He served in the 2nd Danube Division. After the liquidation of the white troops in the North Caucasus , Vlasov fought against Wrangel's troops in North Tauria . Vlasov was a company commander and then served on the staff. End of 1920 Vlasov was ordered to mounted and Fußaufklärung and participated in the liquidation of the Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine in part.

From 1922 Vlasov held command and staff functions, but also occupied himself with his further training. In 1929 he finished the Wystrel courses (military academy for infantry). In 1930 Vlasov joined the Communist Party. In 1935 Vlasov was a listener at the Frunze Military Academy . The historian AN Kolsnik found out that Vlasov was a member of the military tribunal in the Leningrad and Kiev military districts during the years of the " Great Purge " 1937–1938 . Since August 1937 Vlasov was commander of the 133rd rifle regiment of the 72nd rifle division and since April 1938 deputy commander of this division. In the autumn of 1938 he was sent to China as a military advisor , with the full confidence of the political leadership. From May to November 1939 he served on the Supreme Military Council . For this he received the Order of the Golden Dragon.

In January 1940, Major General Vlasov became the commander of the 99th Rifle Division, which was honored with the Order of the Red Banner in October 1940 as the best division in the Kiev military district . The then People's Commissar for Defense, Marshal Semyon Tymoshenko , described the unit commanded by Vlasov as the most exemplary division in the entire Red Army. The army newspaper " Krasnaya Zvezda " published an article about Vlasov, in which his skills, discipline and diligence towards his subordinates were underlined.

In World War II

Vlasov first fought on the Soviet side against the Germans in World War II and at the beginning of Operation Barbarossa was part of the 6th Army in the area north of Lemberg . For bravery and skill, he was appointed commander of the 37th Army in Kiev on the recommendation of Nikita Khrushchev . As the commander of the IV Mechanized Corps , he carried out counterattacks in late June 1941 in the tank battle near Dubno from the Brody area and in July near Berdychiv . In September 1941 he commanded the 37th Army in defense of Kiev against the German 6th Army and managed to break out of the pocket in time. During the Battle of Moscow he received command of the 20th Army on the Western Front and, after the start of the Soviet counter-offensive, took back the city of Solnechnogorsk in January 1942 . For this he was immortalized in literature by the Soviet poet Ilya Ehrenburg . In April 1942 he replaced General NK Klykow as Commander in Chief of the 2nd Shock Army and fought under Merezkow on the Volkhov Front for the liberation of Leningrad ( Volkhov Battle ). The 2nd shock army succeeded in advancing further than the other armies, but could not be supplied in the position areas reached; withdrawal was prohibited. After the soldiers ate their horses, later tree bark and leather items, and many of them starved to death, the rest of them were wiped out by the Germans. Vlasov was able to hide for almost two weeks, but was captured by German troops on July 12, 1942.

On the German side

Andrei Andreevich Vlasov, 1944

General Vlasov with soldiers of the Russian Liberation Army (ROA), 1944

While in German captivity, he initiated an anti- Stalin committee among the prisoners . The Reich Leader SS and Chief of the Reserve Army Heinrich Himmler convinced the initially hesitant Adolf Hitler thereof, a Russian Liberation Army with ten Grenadier - divisions , a tank - Association and its own air force to start. The recruitment started in autumn 1944. Vlasov allied with Hitler's Wehrmacht and built with their help the Russian Liberation Army on. On February 10, 1945, he took over command of the new army in Münsingen on the Swabian Alb . A little later, at the request of SS General Gottlob Berger , Vlasov took his personal friend Karl I. Albrecht as adjutant .

On April 11, 1945, immediately before the Buchenwald concentration camp was liberated , the Vlasov army stationed near Buchenwald bombarded the camp and marched off to Bavaria. Shortly afterwards, in the first days of May 1945, Vlasov broke the alliance with Germany by allowing his 1st Division under General Sergei Bunjatschenko to temporarily join the rebels in Prague . He himself was evidently aloof from this company. While these troops surrendered to the American troops after the final liberation of Prague from the German occupation by the Red Army , Karl I Albrecht, who was a prospective agent for the Soviet Glawnoje Raswedywatelnoje Uprawlenije (GRU) , lured the unsuspecting Vlasov via Bayerisch Eisenstein in early May 1945 into a trap in Klattau, which is now under Soviet control . It is unclear whether the Americans encouraged the arrest in order to extradite him to the Soviet Union.

Trial and Execution

His trial, which was conducted in camera, began on July 30, 1946 and ended two days later with the death sentence . On August 1, 1946, Vlasov was hanged in Moscow's Lubyanka .

Political goals

Monument to Vlasov and the Russian Liberation Army, of the Russian Orthodox church in Nanuet in the US state of New York built (2006)

His political objectives published in the Vlasov propaganda motivated so-called Prague Manifesto of 14 November 1944. He wanted a fall of Bolshevism , but no return to the Tsardom . He proclaimed the protection of the individual against arbitrariness and the possibility of appropriating the fruits of one's own labor, as well as civil liberties and the protection of private property acquired through one's own labor.

reception

The Soviet Union viewed Vlasov as a traitor, but his historical role in today's Russia is viewed more positively by a few historians. In their eyes he was the exponent of an opposition to Stalin that was widespread in the USSR, but not organized because of the bloody state terror , and saw no other option but to collaborate with his enemies .

literature

Catherine Andreyev: Vlasov and the Russian liberation movement: Soviet reality and émigré theories. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [u. a.] 1988, ISBN 0-521-30545-4 .
Vladimir Batsev: Vlasov. Opyt literaturnogo issledovanija. Mosty, Frankfurt am Main 2001, ISBN 3-9808038-8-0 .
Edwin Erich Dwinger : General Wlassow - The tragedy of the east. Authentic report. Otto Dikreiter Verlag 1951.
Mark Elliott: Andrei Vlasov. Red Army General in Hitler's Service. In: Military Affairs, Vol. 46, No. 2, 1982, ISSN 0026-3931 , pp. 84-87.
Yuli A. Kwicinsky: General Vlasov: put 'predatel'stva. Sovremennik, Moskva 1999, ISBN 5-270-01284-7 .
Joachim Hoffmann : The History of the Vlasov Army. 2., unchanged. Edition Rombach, Freiburg 1986, ISBN 3-7930-0186-5 .
Joachim Hoffmann: The tragedy of the "Russian Liberation Army" 1944/45. Vlasov against Stalin. Herbig, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-7766-2330-6 .
Aleksandr Lapsin: Rokovaja schvatka: Vlasov, Stalin, Allilueva, Gitler, Berija i drugie - neizvestnoe. Kron-Press, Moskva 1997, ISBN 5-232-00496-4 .
Matthias Schröder: Baltic German SS leaders and Andrej Vlasov 1942–1945. "Russia can only be defeated by Russians": Erhard Kroeger , Friedrich Buchardt and the "Russian Liberation Army". Schöningh, Paderborn u. a. 2001, ISBN 3-506-77520-0 (= dissertation, University of Münster 2000).
Sven Steenberg : Vlasov, traitor or patriot? Science and Politics, Cologne 1969.
Wilfried Strik-Strikfeldt: Against Stalin and Hitler. General Vlasov and the Russian freedom movement. 2nd edition by Hase and Koehler, Mainz 1970, ISBN 3-7758-0785-3 .
Jürgen Thorwald : The illusion. Red Army soldiers against Stalin. The tragedy of the Vlasov army. Updated and revised edition of the 2nd edition from 1976. Droemer Knaur, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-426-80066-7 .
Ernst-Joachim Westerburg: Germany and Russia. On the foreign policy concepts of the German resistance and the Vlasov supporters in World War II. Europaforum, Lauf an der Pegnitz 2000 ( Master's thesis , University of Marburg ).
Helmut Roewer , Stefan Schäfer, Matthias Uhl : Lexicon of the secret services in the 20th century . Herbig, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-7766-2317-9 .
Learn from Hitler's mistakes . In: Der Spiegel . No. 7 , 1950, pp. 17 ( online ).
Günther Hecht: General Wlassow. Millions of Russians trusted him. Zeitbiographischer Verlag, Limburg an der Lahn, 1960, DNB 451885198 .

Movies

The defector. The Vlasov case , TV-FRG 1977, directed by Hans Quest .

Individual evidence

↑ Fedor Davydovich Sverdlov: Sovetskie generaly v plenu . Izd-vo fonda "Kholokost", 1999, p. 97.
^ Catherine Andreyev: Vlasov and the Russian liberation movement: Soviet reality and émigré theories . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [u. a.] 1988, ISBN 0-521-30545-4 , p. 113.
↑ Е. Андреева: Генерал Власов и Русское освободительное движение / Vlasov and the Russian Liberation Movement . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1987, ISBN 1-8701-2871-0 , p. 37.
↑ Н. С. Хрущев: Время. Люди. Власть , ИИК «Московские Новости», 1999, p. 312.
↑ On Albrecht's relations with the Soviet secret services, see Peter-Ferdinand Koch : Enttarnt. Double agents: names, facts, evidence . Ecowin, Wals 2011, ISBN 978-3-7110-5013-7 , pp. 57-73. Koch processed two accounts of the history of the GRU that Soviet historians had written in 1965 and 1990 for internal GRU purposes. The CIA procured it in 1992 and turned it over to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in Washington ; See Koch's declaration, p. 431. On the arrest of Vlasov, p. 68, Koch's source is the Soviet illustration from 1990.

Web links

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

personal data
SURNAME	Vlasov, Andrei Andreevich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Власов, Андрей Андреевич (Russian); Vlasov, Andrej Andreevič (scientific transliteration)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	soviet lieutenant general
DATE OF BIRTH	September 14, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH	Lomakino , Nizhny Novgorod Governorate
DATE OF DEATH	August 1, 1946
Place of death	Moscow

[1] Fedor Davydovich Sverdlov: Sovetskie generaly v plenu . Izd-vo fonda "Kholokost", 1999, p. 97.

[2] Catherine Andreyev: Vlasov and the Russian liberation movement: Soviet reality and émigré theories . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [u. a.] 1988, ISBN 0-521-30545-4 , p. 113.

[3] Е. Андреева: Генерал Власов и Русское освободительное движение / Vlasov and the Russian Liberation Movement . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1987, ISBN 1-8701-2871-0 , p. 37.

[4] Н. С. Хрущев: Время. Люди. Власть , ИИК «Московские Новости», 1999, p. 312.

[5] On Albrecht's relations with the Soviet secret services, see Peter-Ferdinand Koch : Enttarnt. Double agents: names, facts, evidence . Ecowin, Wals 2011, ISBN 978-3-7110-5013-7 , pp. 57-73. Koch processed two accounts of the history of the GRU that Soviet historians had written in 1965 and 1990 for internal GRU purposes. The CIA procured it in 1992 and turned it over to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in Washington ; See Koch's declaration, p. 431. On the arrest of Vlasov, p. 68, Koch's source is the Soviet illustration from 1990.