Of all the fascist Nazi organizations criticized by the Soviet Union and supported by Germany in Eastern Europe in World War II, the most spurned by the Soviet Union were the traitor Vlasov and his Nazi Russian minions. Some niche European literature depicts Vlasov as a former Tsarist general, or a Cossack leader, who led the new Tsarist Russia, with more than 10 million leaders, fighting alongside Germany against the Soviet Union. Despite Vlasov's strange beliefs and the fact that the strength of his servants was often blown away, all the writers agreed that Vlasov had attacked the Soviet Union with the Germans.
From hero to traitor
Vlasov was once one of the most outstanding generals in the Soviet Army, and since joining the Russian Red Army, he has continued to show his good side. And the superiors are also very serious about this face of the backbone, serious honest people, it is precisely because of this Vlasov was recommended to enter the military academy many times, and in the 30s became Pavlov and Zhukov's apprentices, became one of the early Soviet tank regiment commanders. He also studied military organization and dispatch under Voroshilov, which doomed Vlasov's military career to be extraordinary.
At the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, Vlasov, commander of the Soviet Fourth Mechanized Army, took part in the desperate Dubno counterattack and successfully withdrew his troops from the German encirclement in formation. It was also because of this outstanding record that Vlasov was appointed commander of the Kiev front in the Defense of Kiev, and after a series of fierce battles, the Germans went around Kiev and surrounded the city. Vlasov was ordered to command his troops to buy time for General Kilbonos to break through, and his troops were withdrawn from the crumbling city at the last minute, and successfully broke through the German encirclement and successfully joined the Soviets in the rear.
The feat of Vlasov leading the rear troops to successfully highlight the German encirclement at the last moment attracted stalin's attention, so Vlasov took part in the Defense of Moscow in October 1941. At that time, Hitler and his generals were ready to take the Soviet capital in an all-round way, and Stalin entrusted the task of front-line defense to Zhukov, who commanded an army group as Zhukov's subordinate to block the main direction of the German attack. Under Zhukov's leadership, the Soviets successfully blocked the German offensive, and Vlasov, the commander of one of the armies, was particularly prominent, and he was awarded the Order of Hero of the Soviet Union by Stalin himself, and also received the honor of delivering a speech defending victory in Moscow's Red Square.
At that time, Stalin intended to train Vlasov according to the specifications of a marshal, so in 1942 he appointed Vlasov as commander of the Volkhov Front. Stalin ignored the fact that there were some feuds between his two beloved generals, Vlasov and Zhukov, who had quarreled three times, from the Dubno counterattack to the defense of Kiev to the Moscow counterattack. At this time, Walkhov was under the jurisdiction of the Northwest Leningrad Theater of Operations, and Vlasov would inevitably suffer some hardships.
Sure enough, Vlasov was ostracized by Meretskov as soon as he arrived at Volkhov, and as Stalin's deputy commander of the Front, Vlasov was excluded from military meetings and tactical decision-making meetings, and finally he had to seek the work of a military adviser to the front-line troops, which was officially surrounded by German legions of the Assault II Army. By that time, the second episode had been cut and surrounded by German cuts, and Vlasov volunteered to enter the encirclement to replace the sick Lieutenant General Khozin and Lieutenant General Kuzmich, re-establish discipline and organize a breakout.
Thanks to Vlasov's efforts, the Soviet force, which had 80,000 men at the time of the battle, had about 30,000 men breaking through the siege. In fact, after a series of battles, the strength of the Assault Second Army at this time did not exceed 70,000 people, and Vlasov saved nearly half of the lives of officers and soldiers, but Vlasov himself was captured by the Germans in July 42. Stalin was shocked to hear the news, but immediately after the news that Vlasov had defected to the enemy and assisted the German army in forming a minion army, the angry Stalin was furious and vowed to make Vlasov pay the price.
Vlasov's new Tsarist Russia
Vlasov was not the first Soviet general to be captured by the Germans in a prisoner-of-war camp, but he was a key target of the German army, because when he was arrested, Vlasov immediately revealed his identity in exchange for life support, which proved that he was greedy for life and afraid of death, and was very different from the Soviet generals who did not say a word in the prisoner of war camp and let the Germans torture.
As soon as Vlasov entered the camp, he offered the Germans that he wanted to have a single room and let his cook live next to him and help him cook at any time. The Germans complied with his demands and sent three former soviet mid-level officers who had defected to Germany to persuade Vlasov, during which time Vlasov remained silent and seemed intent on expressing his loyalty to the Soviet Union. But then the German intelligence agencies themselves intervened to rebel against the general, who was already not determined enough.
Beginning with Vlasov's betrayal, he confessed a lot of information about the Soviet Union in prison, and the Soviet Union became synonymous with regression in Vlasov's mouth, and Stalin was described by Vlasov as a terrible ruler who was very angry after a day of not killing people and liked to carry out a terrible and bloody reign. Vlasov not only told the Germans about these things, he also hyped up in prisoner-of-war camps, inciting Soviet prisoners with forged documents from the Germans to join the German minions and make enemies of the Soviet Union. Perhaps Vlasov said this for the sake of survival, but his words were used by the Germans as material for anti-Soviet propaganda, so that Stalin and even almost the entire Soviet army knew that this traitor was jumping up and down and colluding with fascists.
The Germans took advantage of the Soviet captives who had been fooled by Vlasov to form the so-called "Vlasovist Army" and later renamed the "Russian Army" (please forgive me for using the abbreviation here). Although Vlasov was the titular commander of the unit, Vlasov did not directly lead the unit until 1944 and remained under German surveillance. The Germans thought he was unreliable and did not rule out that he was acting in order to form an army waiting for an opportunity to bite back against the Germans. In Hitler's view, Vlasov turned against him too quickly, and the contrast between before and after proved that he was a beam-jumping clown in his bones, with no credibility and loyalty to speak of.
During his surveillance by the Germans, Vlasov was ordered to give many speeches in the Occupied Areas of Belarus and Ukraine, and in order to better control the Occupied Territories, the Germans had Vlasov lie that Germany was a friendly friendly army, that the Soviet Union had been hollowed out by the Jews, and that Stalin had been kidnapped by the Jews. Germany had come to help the Soviet Union and Stalin, and only by eliminating the Soviet Union could the Soviet Union be rebuilt in its purity.
In 1943 Vlasov finally stopped needing speeches prepared by German intelligence, and the Germans were already relieved that the previous series of speeches had prevented him from escaping the German chariot. In April, Vlasov was ordered to the Baltic region to give a speech in which he denounced the Soviet Union and Stalin, in which he incited the baltic states and Russian nationalism, and threatened to save Russia only by rebuilding Tsarist Russia, a tsarist Russia that restored the Russian system and rebuilt the aristocratic system, but without the Tsar, Vlasov promised that he would restore the true knowledge and glory of Russia.
His speech was reported in the occupied territories, not only in Moscow but also in Berlin, and Stalin swore to punish Vlasov with the harshest measures possible. Hitler was furious when he saw the report and demanded an immediate end to Vlasov's speeches. Hitler feared that Vlasov's speech would be counterproductive, and that the occupation zones might become less targeted not only at the Soviet Union but also at Germany because of nationalism. This was something hitler very much did not want to see, and he also expected to mobilize the occupied territories to crush the Soviet Union and then invade the world.
epilogue:
The first half of Vlasov's life was in stark contrast to the second half of his life, as he was a loyal supporter of the Soviet Union, a beloved general of Stalin, an expert in encirclement warfare, and received the highest military honor of the Soviet Union. The act of surrendering instantly after being captured by the Germans was a shock, and it is no wonder that Stalin hated him and Hitler looked down on him.
bibliography:
The Biography of Andrei Vlasov
Andrey Vlasov between the Nazis and the Soviet Union