Vlasov reviewing his troops. Note the light machineguns, which are captured Russian weapons. The solider without an insignia on his helmet is wearing a World War One vintage M16 helmet.
Andrey Vlasov, age 45, Red Army General, and then collaborationist general with the Germans, and then against the Germans again, but against the Soviets at the very end, was executed.
Vlasov has an interesting personal history. In his adult years he started off, like Stalin, as a student at a Russian Orthodox seminary. While there, he switched to agriculture and in 1919 joined the Red Army. He did not join the Communist Party until 1930. He was part of the Soviet military mission from 1938 until 1940 and was regarded as highly effective.
Early in World War Two his performance in the Red Army was sterling, but his forces were encircled and forced to surrender. He refused to be evacuated by air to avoid becoming a POW.
As a POW, well actually a true prisoner, he met Baltic German Wilfried Strik-Strikfeldt, who was serving in the German army and attempting to foster a Russian Liberation Movement with the assistance of some of the figures who later were party of the July 20 plot. The movement never had the full support of the Germans, and indeed, the opposite is the case to a large extent. While it was allowed to raise troops, for the most part, they did not fight, and indeed the one significant action they engaged in was right at the end of the war against the Germans. An attempt by the unit to surrender to the American Army in Czechoslovakia was rejected by the Americans and they fell into Soviet hands. They were accordingly repatriated to the Soviet Union, an effort that continued on after the war into 1947.*
The Russian Liberation Army, as it was styled, was not, it should be noted, the only group of Soviet citizens or for that matter former members of the Red Army to fight with the Germans. Sizable numbers did. But the RLA was the largest such group.
A memorial to Vlasov was erected at the Novo-Diveevo Russian Orthodox convent and cemetery in Nanuet, New York. Twice annually, on the anniversary of Vlasov's execution and on the Sunday following Orthodox Easter, a memorial service is held for Vlasov and the forces of the Russian Liberation Army there.
Cartoon by Jewish Polish American cartoonist Arthur Szyk. Szyk was an illustrator who drew and painted amazingly detailed illustrations.
Vlasov and his men are a good example of the way in which World War Two was not necessarily viewed as a war between fascism and liberty everywhere, and indeed, in the East, it was never that. The Germans had no intentions whatsoever of liberating Soviet citizens, which is why they never actually deployed the ROA. But many Soviet citizens saw it as a chance to overthrow the Communists, even if that was naive as to what it would actually achieve with the Germans in the lead. The Finns of course were fighting their own war entirely. Some Frenchmen saw it as a war between the West and Communism, and volunteered, albeit in small numbers to sever in the German war effort. Spanish fascists saw it as a war between Communism and Fascism.
Likewise, in Asia, the war on a local level was complicated in ways that we generally don't appreciate. The Japanese were outright barbaric against the Chinese, but the fighting was done by the Nationalist. The Communists were armed, but largely sat the war out. The Soviet Union did not support the Chinese Communists until the very end of the war. The Nationalist, for its part, had significant military missions for the USSR and Nazi Germany until just before the war. Some Chinese fought for the Japanese in collaborationist armies that would be destroyed, post war, when the Nationalist conscripted them in the civil war. The post war leaders of Indonesia were outright collaborationist with the Japanese, and at least a few member of the Philippine collaborationist government would go on to have political careers in the post war republic.
Radioactive isotopes were sold for medical treatment purposes for the first time.
It was day 2 of the Battle of Athens. The discharged GI's would prevail.
Footnotes:
*The repatriation of Soviet citizens is a topic that's barely mentioned in the story of post World War Two Europe. Naturally, there was very little sympathy for them even though, to a large extent, those who sided with the Germans can be regarded as very misguided anti communists for the most part, although the liberation movement itself included some Communists. Large-scale suicide occurred amongst those being sent back. Some made it to the United States one way or another where they were generally extremely quiet about their past. All in all, about one third of the troops in this category managed to avoid being repatriated one way or another. Gen. Patton largely refused to repatriate Soviet civilians and soldiers and released 5,000 ROA soldiers in 1945.
Repatriated soldiers were sent to the gulags. Senior officers, like Vlasov, were executed. Survivors of the gulags were released in 1953 upon Stalin's death.
The ROA troops who Patton held were those who had been under a German commander, Theodor Oberländer. Oberländer.is an interesting guy in that he was a Nazi official who was an expert in the East, had a falling out with his commanders, and was released from the German Army. He went on to be an officer in the ROA. After the war he served in the Bundestag and became the Federal Ministry of Displaced Persons. He died in 1998.
Wilfried Strik-Strikfeldt survived the war. When the ROA was formed the SS tried to have him join it, but he managed to avoid that. After the war he was held in the West with prominent German war criminals. He had been an Olympian in the 1936 Munich Olympics and prior to that had fought as an Imperial Russian officer in World War One and with the Whites in the Russian Civil War.
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Labels: 1940s, 1946, Aircraft, Atomic Energy Commission, Denmark, Education, It was because of World War Two, Norway, Post War United States (and Canada), Sweden, Tennessee, Transportation
