Vasily Ivanovich Chuikov

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Wassili Tschuikow (around 1960)
Vasily Ivanovich Chuikov

Wassili Iwanowitsch Tschuikow ( Russian Василий Иванович Чуйков , scientific transliteration Vasilij Ivanovič Čujkov, born January 31 July / February 12,  1900 greg. In Serebrjanyje Prudy , Tula Governorate , Russian Empire ; † March 18, 1982 in Moscow ) was a Soviet empire Military leaders and politicians. He received the Hero of the Soviet Union award in 1944 and 1945 and was appointed Marshal of the Soviet Union in 1955 .

Life

Tschuikow grew up in a poor farming family with twelve children. He was born the eighth child and fifth of eight brothers. He attended elementary school in the village for four years. At the age of 12 he went to Saint Petersburg , where his brothers were already living as simple workers. For five rubles and food, he worked as a porter boy for two years. He later trained as a locksmith and also worked in this profession. Like three of his brothers, he was in the Baltic Fleet in Kronstadt in 1917 . Two of the brothers took an active part in the assault on the Winter Palace , thus in the October Revolution . He was only briefly in the fleet before deserting with his brothers. Like his brothers, he was an early supporter of the Bolsheviks and in 1917 a member of the Red Guard . He joined the Red Army in 1918 . In 1918 he took part in the fight against the uprising of the Left Social Revolutionaries in Moscow. This was followed by four months of training at the Alexejewski Military School.

In 1919 he was accepted as a member of the CPSU . During the Russian Civil War he became regimental commander and was deployed in Siberia. In 1925 he graduated from the Frunze Military Academy in Moscow. In 1929 he was in China for the first time as a consultant . From September 1929 to 1933 head of a staff department of the Special Red Banner Far East Army. Until 1935 head of a KUKS (advanced training course of the troop command of the Red Army). In 1935 he was at the Stalin Military Academy in Moscow for seven months. 1936 to 1938 commander of a mechanized brigade in Bobruisk . From 1938 commander of a rifle corps. Subsequently head of the Brobruisk Army Group, later renamed the 4th Army.

During the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939, Chuikov was Commander-in-Chief of the 4th Soviet Army. During the Soviet-Finnish winter war of 1939/1940 he commanded the 9th Soviet Army and suffered a defeat in the Battle of Suomussalmi . From December 1940 to March 1942 he was then used as a military attaché in the Republic of China . In June 1942 he was promoted to lieutenant general and from July 10 to August 4 he was in command of the 64th Army in the eastern Don Arc. On September 12, 1942 he became Commander in Chief of the 62nd Army (later 8th Guards Army ), which he commanded at the Battle of Stalingrad .

Chuikov was known for his harshness. According to Stalin's orders, at the end of 1942 he had officers shot who had defied his orders. This was to show the soldiers what would happen in such a case. In his book Stalingrad - Beginning of the Path , his view of the Battle of Stalingrad, Chuikov justified his harshness with the sentence “time is blood” (based on the motto “time is money”): he had to speed up his officers They have to press decisions, otherwise their hesitation would have endangered the lives of their subordinates. He shot several officers himself. Chuikov wrote: “We immediately applied the toughest measures to all cowards. On the 14th I shot the commander and the commissar of a regiment, a little later I also shot two brigade commanders and the commissars. Everyone was totally amazed. We brought this to the attention of all fighters, but above all the officers ”. In October 1942, Chuikov ordered the commander of the 138th Rifle Division to capture the Stalingrad station. Tschuikow: "I warn you that if you fail to comply with my military order, you will be brought to justice." The historian Jörg Baberowski assessed as a consequence of this order that thousands of soldiers were senselessly sacrificed.

Memorial plaque on the house on Schulenburgring 2 in Berlin-Tempelhof
General Tschuikow congratulates Wilhelm Pieck (1951)

In 1945/1946 Tschuikow was head of the Soviet military administration in Thuringia (SMAT), from 1946 to March 1949 deputy head of the Soviet military administration in Germany (SMAD) and its commander from March 1949 to November 1949. It was Tschuikow who in Berlin-Karlshorst, by decision of the Soviet government, officially transferred the government of the GDR to the government . From 1949 to 1953 Army General Tschuikow was head of the Soviet Control Commission (SKK) and commander in chief of the Soviet Armed Forces group in Germany .

Chuikov was a candidate of the Central Committee of the CPSU from 1952 to 1961 and became a full member in 1961. After Stalin's death , Chuikov (1953 to 1960) became head of the Kiev military district , which initially meant a decline for him. In 1955, however, he received the rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union . From 1960 to 1964 he was Commander in Chief of the Land Forces of the USSR and Deputy Minister of Defense of the Soviet Union. From 1964 to 1972 he was Chief of Civil Defense and from 1972 Inspector General of the Ministry of Defense.

Tschuikow wrote several books in which he described his experiences as a commander in World War II. He is the only Marshal of the Soviet Union to be buried in Volgograd on Mamayev Hill and thus the first outside Moscow to honor his achievements during the Battle of Stalingrad.

Fonts in German translation

  • Stalingrad - the beginning of the path . German military publisher, Berlin 1961.
  • The end of the Third Reich . Goldmann, Munich 1966 (and other editions).
  • Guardsmen on the way to Berlin . Military publishing house of the German Democratic Republic, Berlin 1976.
  • Stalingrad: Lessons of History . Progress Moscow publishing house 1979; Parallel edition: Röderberg-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1979, ISBN 3-87682-593-8 .
  • The battle of the century . Military publishing house of the German Democratic Republic, Berlin 1980 (and other issues).

literature

  • Jochen Hellbeck: The Stalingrad Protocols. S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 2012, ISBN 978-3-10-030213-7 , chapter Army General Vasily Tschuikow, pp. 319-348.
  • DN Filippow, M. Heinemann (ed.): Who was who in the Soviet military administration 1945–1949. Short Biographical Handbook (Кто был кто в Советской военной администрации в Германии 1945-1949 гг., (Центральные органы СВАГ). Краткий биографический справочник). Without publisher, Moscow 1999/2000.
  • Norman M. Naimark : The Russians in Germany. The Soviet occupation zone 1945 to 1949 . Propylaea, Berlin 1997.
  • Jan Foitzik:  Tschuikow, Wassili Iwanowitsch . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 2. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .

Web links

Commons : Vasily Chuikov  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jochen Hellbeck: The Stalingrad Protocols. S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 2012, ISBN 978-3-10-030213-7 , chapter Army General Vasily Tschuikow pp. 319-348.
  2. ↑ In addition: Wassili Iwanowitsch Tschuikow: Mission in China (Миссия в Китае). Wojenisdat , Moscow 1983.
  3. ↑ a b Jörg Baberowski: Scorched Earth. Stalin's rule of violence , Fischer-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 2012, p. 285, ISBN 978-3-596-19637-1 , there cited from Nacnyj Archiv Instituta Rossijskoj Istorii Akademii Nauk (NAIRI), Fon 2, opis' 5 , delo 2a. l. 7th
personal data
SURNAME Tschuikow, Wassili Iwanowitsch
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Чуйков, Василий Иванович (Russian)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Soviet military leader and politician
DATE OF BIRTH February 12, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Serebrjanyje Prudy , Tula Governorate
DATE OF DEATH March 18, 1982
Place of death Moscow