Yakov was Stalin's eldest son, and his relationship with Stalin from an early age was never particularly harmonious. When he was young, his father left him and his mother for work reasons, and after his mother's death, his uncle and aunt adopted him for a period of time, until his father's career was completed, and he was taken from his hometown to live with his father.
When he lived with his father, his father was very strict with him, never giving him a false color, and casting a dark shadow on his adolescent life with a harsh attitude. In his youth, he even committed suicide because of his father's accusations. When the news of his suicide reached his father's ears, his father acted very coldly and said something like how he did not die. From these aspects, we can know what kind of real state their father-son relationship is.
In the autumn of 1941, the German army and the Soviet army fought a month-long decisive battle on the outskirts of Moscow, with more than 3 million troops on both sides, heavy casualties, more than a million casualties, and nearly 90,000 people on the Soviet side, including Stalin's eldest son Yakov. After the outbreak of the Great Patriotic War, Yakov signed up for the army, and after Yakov came to the barracks, he served as a captain of the engineers of the second battalion of the third regiment of the tank division of the 16th Army, and he did not think that it would not be long before he was captured.
The Germans discovered Yakov's identity and intended to exchange Yakov from Stalin for a German marshal captured by the Soviets, but to the surprise of the Germans, Stalin directly refused their request. Why not save it? In fact, there is a reason for this, because Stalin went to war with Germany at that time, but the reality is that his side is always defeated, and those who are captured are also spineless, and after being captured, they either leak secrets, or even simply surrender to Germany, but increase Germany's strength in vain. Stalin had no choice but to order that all captured soldiers, whether they surrendered or not, would be arrested.
Stalin can't break his own rules for his son, otherwise he will have any prestige in the future, so how can he rule the Soviet Union and let the many soldiers of the Soviet Union fight the battlefield? In addition, his son was also deep in the mud at that time, sticking to a stinky water. Under the propaganda of German public opinion at that time, this prince was already a traitorous thief, at least, this public opinion attack in Germany made many people in the Soviet Union believe in this matter, at this time, if Stalin wanted to change him back, it would undoubtedly create pressure on himself.
As for the cause of Yakov's death, in fact, there has been no conclusion in history, but there are several main speculations. There were also two British pilots locked up with Yakov at the time, and due to the different consciousnesses of the two sides, there were often some quarrels. One day the conflict intensified, and two British pilots teamed up to beat Yakov. Under the pressure and blows of the long time, Yakov was on the verge of collapse for a long time, and this incident became the last straw.
Ironically, the real cause of Yaakov's death has never been revealed. Because it was later related to the alliance between Britain and the Soviet Union, if Stalin learned that his son's death was due to a conflict with the British army, it might have a bad impact. So the reason was hidden, and Yakov was named a traitor. Until Stalin's inexplicable death, no one ever proposed a reversal of the case. It was only 24 years after Stalin's death that the Soviet Union awarded Yakov a medal of defense.