Georgi Nikolayevich Shilenkov

Wlassow , Schilenkow and Kroeger (from left to right) with Goebbels in Berlin, 1945

Georgi Nikolajewitsch Schilenkow ( Russian Георгий Николаевич Жиленков ; * 1910 in Voronezh , † August 1, 1946 in Moscow ) was a Soviet functionary. As a prisoner of war in the Wehrmacht , he joined the Vlasov Army , whose propaganda chief he became. Shilenkov was executed in Moscow after the end of the war .

Life

Schilenkow joined the CPSU in 1929 and worked as a functionary in industry. In 1939 he received the Order of the Red Banner of Labor for Success in Production. From 1940 on he was regional party secretary of the CPSU in a district near Moscow. After the attack by the Wehrmacht on the Soviet Union, Shilenkov was transferred to the 32nd Army as commissar with the rank of brigadier. With this he got into German captivity on October 14, 1941 in the Vyazma pocket .

First, Shilenkov managed to hide his rank while in captivity. In May 1942 he was recognized and, when he showed that he was ready to cooperate after the first interrogations, he was transferred to the propaganda department at the Wehrmacht High Command . He received the rank of lieutenant general and was appointed propaganda chief of the Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia (KONR). On May 18, 1945, the US authorities interned Shilenkov. The Soviet intelligence service later found out his whereabouts and the Soviet Union requested extradition. On May 1, 1946, Shilenkov was finally handed over by the Americans to the Soviet authorities. On August 1, 1946, the Supreme Military Court of the USSR sentenced him to death . He was hanged in the courtyard of Butyrka Prison that same day .

Web links

• Photo with Schilenkow during a swearing-in ceremony in 1942 at one day