Mikhail Petrovich Petrov

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Mikhail Petrovich Petrov ( Russian Михаил Петрович Петров , scientific transliteration Mikhail Petrovich Petrov * December 22, 1897 . Jul / 3. January  1898 greg. In the village Solusteschje (now Leningrad Oblast ); † October / November 1941 in Golina ( Rajon Karachev )) was a Soviet major general . He worked as a military advisor in the Spanish Civil War and was one of the first soldiers to be considered a Hero of the Soviet Unionwere awarded. In World War II he first commanded a corps and fell as commander of the 50th Army during the Battle of Bryansk .

Life

Early career

Petrov was born on January 3, 1898 into a peasant family in the village of Solusteschje ( Золустежье ) in the Saint Petersburg governorate . His father worked as a stove fitter in the capital and his son helped him with his work from an early age. Petrov attended school through 4th grade. He then worked as a metal worker in the Putilov plant and later as a driver in Saint Petersburg. Here he came into contact with the revolutionaries during the February Revolution. In March 1917 he joined the local 2nd division of the Red Guard . On October 25th, Jul. / 7th November 1917 greg. Petrov took part in the storming of the Winter Palace , which triggered the October Revolution . In early 1918 the Red Guard was transferred to the new Red Army . In their ranks, Petrov took part in the Russian Civil War (1918–1922).

After the civil war he remained in the army and by that time (1920) had already joined the Russian Communist Party . He was transferred to Central Asia, where he was used against Basmachi , Muslim insurgents against the Bolsheviks . Later it was also used in the Caucasus and in the suppression of the peasant uprising in Tambov . In 1923 he attended the infantry school in Tambov and then the political school in Transcaucasia . He was transferred to the tank weapon in 1932. First he attended a tank training course for officers in Leningrad in 1932. He then commanded the training battalion of the 1st Mechanized Brigade. From October 1936 to June 1937 he had the opportunity to gain practical experience, as he was part of the group of Soviet military advisers in the Spanish Civil War during this period . There he commanded a tank battalion with the rank of major . In recognition of his achievements on the side of the Republicans , he received the title Hero of the Soviet Union on June 21, 1937 . Petrov is said to have cursed in Spanish many times later during the Second World War.

Corps commander

Upon his return, Petrov took command of a tank division and published articles on the subject in specialist journals. He was also a member of the newly constituted Supreme Soviet of the USSR from December 12, 1937 until his death . However, during the Great Terror , which killed a large part of the higher officer corps, Petrov quickly rose to command the 5th Mechanized Corps. This he commanded in September / October 1939 during the Soviet occupation of Eastern Poland . On the advance into the Grodno area , Petrov's corps was the first to be supplied with air-loaded fuel on the march. In the newly established Special Western Military District , Petrov acted as inspector of the armored forces and also as deputy commander of the 6th Mechanized Corps. When the military ranks in the Red Army were introduced at that time , Petrov was appointed major general in 1940 . In early 1941 he attended a course at the General Staff Academy in Moscow before taking command of the 17th Mechanized Corps on March 11, 1941. This was stationed on the western border in the Slonim area.

The 17th Mechanized Corps was just being formed. While comparable corps had more than a thousand tanks, Petrov's three divisions (27th and 36th armored divisions, 209th motorized division) had only 36 armored vehicles - including no modern types. When the German attack on the Soviet Union began on June 22, 1941 , Petrov's formations were initially in the hinterland. But after just a few days, a breakthrough by German Panzer Group 2 became apparent (→ Kesselschlacht bei Białystok and Minsk ). The High Command of the Soviet Western Front was therefore forced to move the 17th Mechanized Corps - despite its inoperative condition - to the Baranowitschi area, where it was supposed to stop the German tanks. On June 26, 1941, the corps was hit by the German XXXXVIII. Army corps (motorized) under General Joachim Lemelsen blown up. Technically and numerically inferior, only a third of the soldiers armed, they had little to do with the German attack. The scattered parts of the corps withdrew in groups to the east to the Berezina , where they joined other Soviet units. During this phase of the war, unsuccessful Soviet generals were often arrested and / or executed. Such a fate met, among others, Major General Stephan Oborin , commander of the 14th Mechanized Corps, as well as Petrov's direct superior Army General Dmitri Pavlov , Commander of the Western Front and Lieutenant General Aleksander Korobkow , Commander of the 4th Army . Petrov, however, remained unmolested.

On July 4, the 17th Mechanized Corps was officially subordinated to the 21st Army under Lieutenant General Fyodor Kuznetsov in the Bobruisk area . However, it no longer had any vehicles. With the renewed German advance on July 10, 1941 and the ensuing Kesselschlacht near Smolensk , the corps found itself again in heavy defensive battles and in some cases was again enclosed. The repeated heavy losses caused the headquarters of the command of the Supreme Commander (Stawka VGK) to release the remnants of the 17th Mechanized Corps from the front at the end of July and transfer them to the Sukhinichi area . Under the nominal command of the 4th Army , which had also been detached from the front, the remnants of the corps were transferred to the 27th Panzer Division and later converted into the 147th Panzer Brigade. Petrov's troops had suffered heavy losses. Two of the three division commanders were out. Most of the time they had been confined and rarely used closed. Petrov was later happy to report that he had fought by himself, in full parade uniform, armed only with a club to fend off stray dogs.

Commander of the 50th Army

Soviet soldiers fighting at the approaches to Moscow (September 1941)
Wehrmacht encircled the Brjansk Front (October 1941)

When the new Brjansk Front was formed on August 14, 1941 by a restructuring of the forces under Colonel General AI Yeryomenko , in the Karachev area the 217th, 279th, 258th, 260th, 290th, 278th, 269th, 280th Rifle Division and 55th Cavalry Division to form the new 50th Army on this front. Petrov was made its commander. The fighting continued. At the end of August and beginning of September 1941, the Bryansk Front concentrated its counter-attacks on Panzer Group 2 under Colonel General Guderian, which slowly gained space to the south and thus initiated the battle of Kiev . But Petrov's 50th Army was not involved. At the beginning of September it was to support an offensive of the reserve front under Army General Georgi Zhukov against the German 4th Army with four divisions . While the reserve front in the Jelnja bend was successful, the advance of the 50th Army was largely unsuccessful.

After that there was a relative calm in the army sector. At the end of September 1941 the journalist and later writer Wassili Grossman visited the headquarters of the 50th Army and recorded some impressions in his diary. Grossman noted the general's contradicting character: “Petrov is short and has a long nose […] Petrov is very cruel and brave. […] He loves cats, especially kittens, and plays with them. "On the general's leadership style, he reported:" He [Petrov] responded to a request from a division commander who asked to postpone an attack because of the high casualties: 'Say him to postpone the attack if he's the only one left. ' […] The army commander [Petrov] rebukes a regimental commander: 'If you have not taken the village in an hour, you will give up your command and take part in the next attack as a common soldier!' "

On September 30, the Wehrmacht began Operation Taifun , the offensive against the Bryansk western and reserve fronts with the aim of capturing Moscow. The double battle at Vyazma and Bryansk developed from the advance of three tank groups . On October 3, Panzer Group 2 had reached the city of Oryol behind the Brjansk Front. Yeryomenko asked the Stavka VGK for permission to withdraw, but received no response. When his command post was attacked at noon on October 6th, the connection to Moscow was broken. Assuming that Yeryomenko had fallen or been captured, the Stavka VGK called the headquarters of the 50th Army on October 7th and instructed Petrov to lead the troops on the Bryansk Front (50th Army, 3rd Army, 13th Army) to take over. Petrov himself had only learned on October 2 that a new offensive had already led the Germans more than 100 kilometers behind him. Moreover, his own army had fallen at this time also on its northern flank in distress, where the German troops Zhizdra reached. The inclusion of the entire Bryansk Front was on the horizon. Now Petrov's task would be to lead the three armies with all their heavy equipment out of their clutches and into a new line of defense. He was rather pessimistic about the situation and, given his new responsibilities, remembered the fate of other unsuccessful Soviet commanders. German soldiers found the following entry in the diary of NKVD major Shabalin, who later fell :

“At breakfast I congratulated General Petrov on his appointment as commander of the Briansk Army Group. General Petrov only replied: 'So now you want to shoot me too.' I replied, 'How can you talk about shooting? Your appointment as the group's commander is a sign of confidence in your ability to stabilize things. ' General Petrov replied: 'How am I supposed to get the situation under control again if I don't even know where the 3rd and 13th Armies are and what condition they are in?' "

- Major Shabalin

On October 8th, Yeryomenko reappeared and coordinated the 3rd and 13th Armies himself. Petrov's 50th Army had meanwhile been separated from the rest of the Brjansk Front and largely enclosed by another German advance. On October 9th, Petrov's troops broke away from the front and attempted to fight their way through the German ring of containment in the days that followed. The commander himself led attack formations in the front line. Parts of the 50th Army managed to evade the encirclement by October 17th - dispersed into different groups.

Circumstances of death and afterlife

When the individual groups of the army gathered again, Petrov was considered missing. In April 1942, it was assumed in Moscow that he had died and he was struck off the official officer rankings. Initial reports were that Petrov had been seriously wounded during the breakout. The soldiers of his group still carried him with them and hid him in a logging hut in the woods near Karachev . There, the General will on 13 October 1941 gangrene died. Some current works also say that Petrov was killed in the fighting on October 10, 1941.

In 1956, Major Alexander Mikhailovich Petrov, the son of General Petrov, did his own research, which led to an official investigation. It was found that Major General Petrov had been wounded in the breakout. He was shot through both hips and passed out almost entirely from the high blood loss. A group of soldiers led by a doctor and a nurse (Grossman previously mentioned this nurse “Valya” as “Petrov's mistress”) took the general to the village of Golinka, in the woods near Karachev, and hid in the house of the Novokreshchenov family. Petrov suffered from gangrene and could hardly be transported, but he still sent the nurse away. When the Germans appeared in the village, they found the wounded man. But Frau Novokreschchenowa had thrown an old coat over him and claimed it was her husband who had stepped on a mine in the forest. The Germans then withdrew. Another group of dispersed Red Army soldiers carried the general another seven kilometers to a remote hut. As the gangrene worsened, the Red Army men and locals decided to take Petrov to loyal doctors in nearby Karachev for an operation. Petrov, however, refused the plan. He died about ten days later in mid-November 1941. The grave was located in 1956 and the general's body was transferred to Bryansk , where a black granite memorial still stands today.

There are still doubts about this version, which has been known since the early 1960s, which is why other dates of death are also mentioned in the literature. In 1998, for example, Aleksander A. Maslow suggested that Petrov had actually been captured and may have died in German custody. The questioning of captured Soviet officers of the 50th Army by the German enemy reconnaissance led to different conclusions. Colonel Alexander Bogdanow and Lieutenant Colonel Pawel Afanassjew stated that Petrov was shot dead on October 20, 1941, when he happened to meet German soldiers. In retrospect, they judged Petrov to be a “good person”, who was “however undecided as a leader”. He had rejected his own surrender as well as the surrender of his enclosed army.

literature

Petrov's works
Primary literature
  • А.И. Ерёменко: В начале войны. Нaука, Москва 1965. (German: AI Jerjomenko: At the beginning of the war )
  • Antony Beevor, Luba Vinogradova (ed.): A Writer At War - Vasily Grossman with the Red Army 1941–1945. Pimlico, London 2006, ISBN 1-84595-015-1 .
Secondary literature
  • В.В.Бешанов: Танковый погром 1941 года. ACT, Москва 2008. (German: WW Bjeschanow: Das Panzergemetzel ) ISBN 978-5-699-27217-4 .
  • John Erickson: The Road to Stalingrad. Orion Books, London 2003, ISBN 0-304-36541-6 .
  • Robert Forczyk : Tank Warfare on the Eastern Front 1941-1942. Pen & Sword Books, Barnsley 2013, ISBN 978-1-84884-886-3 .
  • David M. Glantz: Barbarossa Derailed - The Battle for Smolensk 10 July - 10 September 1941. Volume 1, Helion & Company, Solihull 2010, ISBN 978-1-906033-72-9 .
  • AA Grechko: History of the Second World War 1939–1945. Volume 4, Military Publishing House of the GDR, Berlin (East) 1975.
  • Lev Lopukhovsky: The Viaz'ma Catastrophe 1941 - The Red Army's Disastrous Stand against Operation Typhoon. Helion & Company, Solihull 2013, ISBN 978-1-908916-50-1 .
  • Aleksander A. Maslov: Fallen Soviet Generals - Soviet General Officers Killed in Battle 1941–1945. Frank Cass Publ., London 1998, ISBN 0-7146-4790-X .
  • А. Окороков: Русские добровольцы. Эксмо, Москва 2007. (German: A. Okorokow: The Russian Volunteers ) ISBN 978-5-699-23162-1 .
  • Michael Parrish: Sacrifice of the Generals - Soviet Senior Officer Losses 1939-1953. Scarecrow Press, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0-8108-5009-5 .
  • Sebastian Stopper: The Brjansk area under the occupation of the Wehrmacht from 1941 to 1943 (diss.), Berlin 2012. ( online version )

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c d Michael Parrish: Sacrifice of the Generals - Soviet Senior Officer Losses 1939-1953 , Oxford 2004, p. 290; Aleksander A. Maslov: Fallen Soviet Generals - Soviet General Officers Killed in Battle 1941–1945. London 1998, p. 30.
  2. ↑ А.И. Ерёменко: В начале войны. Москва 1965, p. 377.
  3. ↑ А.И. Ерёменко: В начале войны. Москва 1965, p. 379.
  4. ^ A b c Michael Parrish: Sacrifice of the Generals - Soviet Senior Officer Losses 1939-1953. Oxford 2004, p. 290.
  5. ^ Vasily Grossman: A Writer At War - Vasily Grossman with the Red Army 1941-1945. London 2006, p. 33.
  6. ↑ А.И. Ерёменко: В начале войны. Москва 1965, p. 42.
  7. ↑ David M. Glantz: Barbarossa Derailed - The Battle for Smolensk 10 July - 10 September 1941. Volume 1, Solihull 2010, pp. 30f, 48.
  8. ↑ Robert Forczyk: Tank Warfare on the Eastern Front from 1941 to 1942. Barnsley 2013, p. 31.
  9. ↑ Robert Forczyk: Tank Warfare on the Eastern Front from 1941 to 1942. Barnsley 2013, p. 52.
  10. ↑ В.В.Бешанов: Танковый погром 1941 года. Москва 2000, p. 266.
  11. ↑ David M. Glantz: Barbarossa Derailed - The Battle for Smolensk 10 July - 10 September 1941 , Volume 1, Solihull 2010, p. 591.
  12. ↑ Robert Forczyk: Tank Warfare on the Eastern Front from 1941 to 1942. Barnsley 2013, p. 254.
  13. ^ A b Antony Beevor, Luba Vinogradova (ed.): A Writer At War - Vasily Grossman with the Red Army 1941–1945. London 2006, p. 31.
  14. ↑ David M. Glantz: Barbarossa Derailed - The Battle for Smolensk 10 July - 10 September 1941. Volume 1, Solihull 2010, p. 394.
  15. ^ John Erickson: The Road to Stalingrad , London 2003, p. 202; PN Pospelow (ed.): History of the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union. Volume 2, Berlin (East) 1963, p. 124; AA Grechko: History of the Second World War 1939–1945. Volume 4, Berlin (East) 1975, pp. 100f.
  16. ^ Antony Beevor, Luba Vinogradova (ed.): A Writer At War - Vasily Grossman with the Red Army 1941-1945. London 2006, p. 32f.
  17. ↑ Klaus Reinhardt: The turning point before Moscow - The failure of Hitler's strategy in the winter of 1941/42 , Stuttgart 1972, p. 64.
  18. ↑ Lev Lopukhovsky: The Catastrophe Viaz'ma 1941 - The Red Army's Disastrous stand against Operation Typhoon. Solihull 2013, pp. 246, 254.
  19. ↑ Quotation in: Erhard Raus : Peculiarites of Russian Warfare (Study Historical Division , June 1949)
  20. ↑ Lev Lopukhovsky: The Catastrophe Viaz'ma 1941 - The Red Army's Disastrous stand against Operation Typhoon. Solihull 2013, p. 317f.
  21. ↑ Aleksander A. Maslov: Fallen Soviet Generals - Soviet General Officers Killed in Battle 1941-1945. London 1998, p. 30.
  22. ^ John Erickson: The Road to Stalingrad. London 2003, p. 219.
  23. ↑ А. Окороков: Русские добровольцы. Москва 2007, p. 123.
  24. ^ Antony Beevor, Luba Vinogradova (ed.): A Writer At War - Vasily Grossman with the Red Army 1941-1945. London 2006, p. 32.
  25. ↑ А.И. Ерёменко: В начале войны. Москва 1965, p. 379f.
  26. ↑ Sebastian Stopper: The Brjansk area under the occupation of the Wehrmacht 1941 to 1943 (diss.), Berlin 2012, p. 20.
personal data
SURNAME Petrov, Mikhail Petrovich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Петров, Михаил Петрович (Russian spelling)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION soviet general
DATE OF BIRTH January 3, 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH Solusteschje near Saint Petersburg
DATE OF DEATH October 1941 or November 1941
Place of death Golina
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on August 10, 2015 .