Pavel Ivanovich Batow

Pavel Ivanovich Batow

Pavel Ivanovich Batov ( Russian Павел Иванович Батов ; born 20 ^jul. / 1. June  1897 ^greg. In Filissowo, Ujesd Rybinsk , government Yaroslavl ; † 19th April 1985 in Moscow ) was a Soviet army general and in the Second World War, two-time Hero of the Soviet Union . From 1945 to 1949 he was the commander of the occupation forces in the Soviet occupation zone .

Life

Batow was born in 1897 as the son of a farmer in what is now Yaroslavl Oblast . During the First World War he was drafted into the tsarist army in 1915, seriously injured in the head in the autumn of 1916 and, in the course of the war, was awarded two crosses of the Order of St. George for bravery. In the spring of 1917 he came to Petrograd for rehabilitation , where the agitator A. Sawkow introduced him to the Bolshevik movement . In 1918 Batow joined the Red Army during the Russian Civil War and moved from machine gunner to deputy platoon leader to commander of larger troop formations. In 1920 he served as an assistant in the command of the Rybinsk Military Committee. As part of the 320th Rifle Regiment, he led a company against the White Guards under Baron Wrangel to liberate the Crimea . From January 1922 to January 1932 he served in multiple functions with the 18th Rifle Division, which was stationed in the Yaroslavl area. In 1927 he completed the "Wystriel" shooting course at the higher academy of the General Staff for senior officers. In 1929 he joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and graduated from the Frunze Military Academy in Moscow in 1932 . He then became a battalion leader and soon afterwards regimental commander of the renowned 1st Moscow Proletarian Rifle Division. Promoted to colonel in 1936 , he served under the pseudonym "Fritz Pablo" in the Spanish Civil War as chief of staff under General Pal Lukacz (actually Máté Zalka ) and in the XII. International Brigade (later under General Lister) in the fighting for Madrid . He led the battle of Teruel and the Jarama , together with Rodimzew near Guadalajara and later on the front in Aragon, where he was wounded again. In December 1937 Batow returned to the Soviet Union, where he was appointed Brigadier General. During the invasion of eastern Poland in September 1939, as division general, he led a rifle division in the 3rd Rifle Corps, which was later transferred to the Finnish front. In the second phase of the Finnish-Soviet winter war (February to March 1940) his troops fought with the 13th Army in Karelia . Batov was awarded the Order of Lenin for the second time on November 3, 1940 for his services in Finland . On June 4, 1940 he was promoted to lieutenant general, then he was posted as deputy commander in the military district of Transcaucasia .

In the German-Soviet War

When Operation Barbarossa broke out, Batow was the commander of the independent 9th Rifle Corps on the southern front and deputy commander of all ground forces on the Crimean peninsula. From July 1941 to January 1942 he was appointed deputy commander of the 51st Army on the Crimean Front and carried out the evacuation of the Kerch peninsula . From January to October 1942 he was in command of the 3rd Army , in September 1942 he acted as Konstantin Rokossovsky's deputy as the commander of the Brjansk Front . From October 14 to 23, 1942, Batow was briefly in command of the newly formed 4th Panzer Army . This army was soon renamed the 65th Army and assigned to Rokossowskis Donfront near Kletskaya. Batows Army participated during the Battle of Stalingrad on the Operation Uranus and the liberation of the city.

After the victory on the Don sector, the 65th Army was moved northwest to the central front. During the Battle of the Kursk Arch (July 1943), his troops held the defensive on the western front arch at Dmitrijew-Lgowski against the German 2nd Army, which was concentrated near Sevsk . From August to October 1943, the 65th Army enforced the crossings on the Sew, Desna , Sosch and Dnieper rivers . Batov's army took part in the 1st Belarusian Front in the strategic operation Bagration in southern Belarus in June 1944 . Despite the swampy terrain, his troops successfully overcame the German front south of Bobruisk using stick dams and other technical equipment. For his performance in the encirclement of the German 9th Army Batow was promoted to Colonel General on June 29, 1944 . The 65th Army crossed the Bug on July 22nd and by early September made their way north of Warsaw to the Narew sector. Rokossowski's armies were renamed the 2nd Belarusian Front and started the breakthrough to the Baltic Sea from the Narew bridgehead at Pultusk on January 12, 1945 during the Mlawa-Elbingen operation . In February 1945 Batow's troops took part in the East Pomeranian operation and then moved to the northern Oder for the final offensive . In April, Soviet units of the 2nd Belarusian Front crossed the Oder south of Stettin and very quickly reached eastern Mecklenburg. By the morning of April 28th there were Soviet troops, including a. the 3rd Armored Guard Corps, already in the Feldberg area . At the same time troops of the 69th Rifle Division forced the German 281st Infantry Division near Woldegk to retreat to the northwest. The first Soviet tanks reached the prisoner-of-war camp at Fünfeichen that same day . On April 29th the advance on Neubrandenburg began from the south . Parts of the 2nd Rifle Battalion also entered the city from the east, contrary to actual orders. The defensive positions previously set up in March could not be occupied by the Volkssturm or effectively defended due to the high speed of the Soviet units. Neubrandenburg was taken by the afternoon. On April 29th and the day after, there was great destruction within the city walls. Intentional arson caused numerous fires, which only survived around 20 percent of the buildings in the city center.

post war period

After the end of the war Batow commanded occupation troops of the Red Army in the Soviet occupation zone until 1949. First the 7th Mechanized Army and, from October 1946, the 7th Panzer Division, which was made smaller. In 1950 he completed a missing leadership course at the higher Voroshilov military academy and then took over the leadership of the 11th Guard Army. On March 10, 1955, he was promoted to army general and received supreme command of the Carpathian military district .

Under his command, Russian troops moved into rebellious Hungary in 1956 . The resistance in Hungary was strong, the political leadership in Moscow wavered between slamming and giving in. When his Hungarian opponent Colonel Pál Maléter was promoted to Minister of Defense , Batov's troops withdrew.

In April 1958 he commanded the troops of the Baltic Military District. In November 1959 he served briefly as a military advisor to the Chinese People's Liberation Army . Army General Batov was appointed Deputy Chief of Staff of the Soviet Army in September 1962 and Chief of Staff of the Warsaw Pact United Armed Forces the following month . From 1970 to 1981 he was chairman of the War Veterans Committee. In the course of his life he wrote six books that dealt with his activities in the world war. Batow had two daughters - Margaret and Galina - with Jozefa Semyonovna and died in Moscow in 1985 after a long and serious illness. His death was not announced publicly until the day after his burial in the Novodevichy Cemetery .

Web links

• Biography on the site of the Russian Ministry of Defense
• Wabrzezno.org - Articles , accessed February 2, 2017

Individual evidence

1. ^ Foundation for Art and Science Neubrandenburg: 70 years of the end of the war in Neubrandenburg . 1st edition. Neubrandenburg 2018, p. 10-12 .